


Reverie

by ltdominic



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Post-Finale, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 00:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12399462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ltdominic/pseuds/ltdominic
Summary: There was a time Taako really could have taken or left it - life, and the world and whatever. Things aren't like that anymore, he tells himself, luckily, because this whole situation might get to be a real fucking drag otherwise.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is the first fanfic I've written since 2011, jesus lord. I think Taako is a great character, so I wanted to write something about him. I've been thinking a lot about how much of his identity was stolen away by the Voidfish along with his memories of Lup, and how he might struggle to reconcile that regained identity and past with the person he had become in the 10 years since. This isn't really a THB fic, it's pretty much just Taakitz, cuz that's what I wanted to write, sorry!
> 
> Also, this was going to be a oneshot, but it got too long and I wanted to post what I had. I guess I'm shooting for novella length? It could be as little as two chapters though, depending on how long it takes me to work through the stuff I have in mind. Whatevs!

Taako is immediately alert and breathing fast, groping automatically for the Umbra Staff. It takes him a moment to process his surroundings: night, maybe early morning. Soft bed, high ceiling, polished hardwood floor, Kravitz. There's no danger - no more staff to reach for, even, and no Hunger to turn it on. Unused to the almost absurd luxury of sleep, he still finds himself disoriented whenever he wakes like this; it seems kind of wrong to surrender consciousness not to blunt force or foreign substances or magic but to himself. That'll pass, he guesses, with time, or he'll give up on this whole dumb endeavour.   
  
In his sleep, he saw a hooded figure hovering in a cavern of pink light, almost convulsing with hostility or rage or grief, bellowing at Taako in a voice like swords clashing, like trees falling, like his sister's death rattle: "You found her?" Taako had remembered the skeleton, had seen very clearly its long-empty eye sockets and buck teeth and long slender hands, now so clearly a mirror of his own, and had watched it look up at him and crumble to dust, and he knew, now, what Barry wanted from him - but still it was impossible to reconcile with the immutable, physical reality of Lup, showing him how to crush garlic, untangling his hair, growing up, breathing, laughing, alive.  _ Back soon. _ Taako dropped to his knees and tried to hold the bones steady, to pack them together in her shape, but she was dissolving in his hands. And then Taako was alone again, in an unfamiliar town, with a caravan and a few boxes of badly printed t-shirts, and the ground was littered with corpses.    
  
He inhales. Closes his eyes, lets the echoes of Barry's demands wash over him, waits until the world is steady again. Beside him, Kravitz sleeps in absolute stillness, his face turned from Taako, forgetting to breathe. In the dark of night and with his guard dropped like this, he really could be just another of a billion billion bodies; Taako's seized with the desire to wake him, to make him work up that synthetic heartbeat, to lie with his ear to Kravitz's chest and close his eyes and picture in excruciating detail the blood pumping, the lungs inflating, the oxygen circulating. It doesn't matter that it wouldn't be real. Taako is so sick, now, of death. It's a little unfair, but he thinks he's earned the right.   
  
Instead of rousing him, though, Taako rises, slips into a robe and quietly goes to the kitchen, pulling spices and vegetables from shelves and racks almost without thinking. It's easy to silence the knife on the cutting board, to whisk away the steam as a stock begins to simmer, and soon the kitchen is filled with the smells of dill and cumin and parsley and oregano. He throws together a marinade, chops up some lamb; pounds some garlic and basil together in the nice marble mortar he's refused to part with since his days on Sizzle it Up; he has just started to knead pepitas into a generous lump of dough when is he hears footsteps approaching.   
  
"Taako," says Kravitz. His voice is a little husky with sleep. One of Taako's ears twitches involuntarily.   
  
"I'm making soup," he volunteers, apropos of nothing, and turns to look at him. "You ever get those midnight, uh, minestrone munchies? I got up to pee, and I started thinking you know what I could absolutely get down on right now -" He pauses, clears his throat. Kravitz is giving him a look he can't quite parse. "I mean, it'll be like another hour, but shit always tastes better the next day anyway, so you can go back to bed. I'll save it. Also, fresh ciabatta!"   
  
Kravitz crosses the kitchen to sit on the bar stool beside Taako, glances into the pot. "Smells good," he says inanely, which Taako graciously ignores; then, after a moment, "it's four in the morning, Taako."   
  
"Darling, time's an illusion," says Taako, breathing a little heavily as he kneads. "I mean, especially for you, right?"   
  
"Not for you," says Kravitz.   
  
Taako frowns slightly at this, but doesn't look around. Unbidden, the image of Lup's lifeless body comes back to him, realer than Kravitz, than the kitchen, than his own hands in front of him. He can see every splinter and crack in her skull. He gives the dough an overzealous shove and accidentally sends the board clattering to the ground and, behind it, the jar containing his sourdough starter, which shatters; the dough hits the floor. "Fuck!" He bends to retrieve it and realises he's shaking; when Kravitz's hand comes to rest on his shoulder, he swats it away.   
  
"Come here, Taako," says Death.   
  
"Just a second," says Taako.   
  
"You can do this in the morning."   
  
"Just a  _ second _ !" He's scraping dough from the floorboards with his nails, though it wouldn't take much to lift it all away magically; he wants to get dust and grime on his fingers, to strain his knees, to feel it. He straightens up with the chopping board, shards of mason jar glittering in the ruined dough. "Excellent," he's murmuring, "cool, only eight months of fermentation down the drain there, no sweat, the first year baking class can spend another fuckin' week on desserts, not like it's any trouble whipping up another-" Kravitz is looking at him with an intensity that makes him want to bolt to another city, another reality. But, of course, there isn't one anymore. He sets down the board too hard, turns to face Kravitz exasperatedly, still talking steadily, almost to himself, "- baby, what  _ is _ it, no offence but the pallid thousand yard stare shit is kind of psyching me out over here and I have a lesson plan to rework now so -" (Kravitz has gotten up from the stool now and is taking Taako's hands, sticky with dough, and pulling him into a hug, and Taako's started to cry at some point, without noticing -) "I'd appreciate a fucking second to just work that nonsense out, if it's no trouble, cuz I'm kinda running out of valuable Taako time to fuckin' squander on beauty sleep if you'll pardon my turn of phrase -"   
  
"Taako," Kravitz is saying, very quietly, into his hair. Taako can feel his cosmetic heart beating through his shirt, almost indistinguishable from the genuine article. "Taako."   
  
"The worst," says Taako in a voice that doesn't sound like his, "fuck's sake," and shuts up, letting Kravitz, braced against the counter, rock him gently back and forth, still whispering his name with such patience and tenderness he feels like he'll shrivel up and die. He's stroking Taako's hair, kissing his temple, and Taako lets the grief and the sorrow crash over him in what seems like endless waves, and they stand like that for what feels like hours but must not be because when Kravitz reaches carefully over to turn off the burner Taako catches a glimpse of the kitchen over his shoulder and it's still pitch dark. He's exhausted, he realises. "You're okay," Kravitz says quietly.    
  
"Sure," says Taako, too depleted to be embarrassed. But he lets Kravitz lead him back to bed, allows himself to be pulled into his arms, closes his eyes when Kravitz tells him to.   
  
"This is still goddamn weird," he croaks, wincing at the unusual pitch and rawness of his voice. "I don't think I'll get used to it."   
  
"Maybe not," says Kravitz. "You've got time, though."   
  
"You think?"   
  
Kravitz nods against the nape of Taako's neck. “Time enough.” He can feel the warmth of his breath. One of his legs is pushed between Taako's. He interlaces the fingers of one hand carefully with Taako's, arm over his stomach, and with the other he's stroking his hair. Taako likes that Kravitz is tall and lean and deliberate in his movements, likes the incongruously soft fingers in his hair, likes his voice, sharp and drawling and charmingly self-conscious beneath the bluster. It's been almost a year, and he likes that Kravitz is still here.   
  
"I guess you'd know, bubbeleh," says Taako, and Kravitz kisses his ear and holds him like something indescribably valuable, and by and by he's asleep, and Kravitz is still here.

-

Taako is famous: more famous, in fact, than he'd ever dared hope, and for him that's a truly serious metric. Everyone in the world knows his name and everyone knows what he's done and everyone loves him. Taako's never going to have to worry about money again, never going to spend another night hungry, never again going to be powerless or alone. For the first time he can remember, Taako wants for nothing. It's a lot to process, actually. The months flit by almost without his noticing, in a daze, as he busies himself with cooking and teaching and his family and the press. He doesn't think about the year before or the hundred and ten before that. He doesn't think much about anything.

But he’s content, if contentedness is the sort of thing that matters to you. He cooks and he talks and he’s dazzling and magical and beloved, and he has decades, maybe centuries, left to fill this way.

-

“Taako, this is too much,” says Barry, half-laughing, as his host sets another platter on the dining table. “I physically can’t -”

“Horseshit,” says Taako primly, “undead digestion doesn’t work like that, no excuses, my man. If I’m only seeing my sister once a fuckin’ decade or whatever I’m feeding her  _ up _ .” He removes a beautifully ornamented cloche with a flourish to reveal a platter of soft, tawny brown meatballs on a bed of fennel and chard, drizzled with browned butter and garlic (the smell is to  _ die  _ for), and settles back into his seat. “Besides, this’s the first time I’ve gotten my hands on  _ giant motherfucking luth _ , so excuse me if I want to maybe do a little taste testing before I inflict it on the masses.” Lup and Kravitz exchange glances from across the table; no one’s moving for their fork.

It’s the first Saturday night he’s had open for an unconscionably long time, and he didn’t let Lup forget it for a second; he’s been planning tonight’s menu for weeks. His dining room seems cavernous with only the four of them in it, the table far too long and severe. The vibe has started pissing him off. Taako waits a moment, then reaches for the wine in the ice bucket, clearing his throat. “Can I top anyone up? No?”

“We really should be thinking about heading home,” says Barry apologetically. “I mean, after this. It’s getting late and I’ve had, uh, this real bastard of a day -”

“Oh,” says Taako flatly. “Okay.” There’s an uncomfortable silence, then, suddenly, the scraping of a fork as Lup starts to scoop meatballs onto her plate.

“Do you eat these with the bread?”

“Sure, yeah. They’d be pretty good on their own, too,” Taako smiles, ignoring Barry’s sideways look at her, and without waiting to be asked he takes Kravitz’s plate to serve him as well. Kravitz is starting to protest, but Taako ignores him. “The classic turtle thing is soup, natch, but Taako’s all about innovation, disrupting the system and whatall, you know. The real untapped territory, if you ask me? Burgers. Some tomato, a little graviera, are you kidding me? They’re expensive as hell, though, and cuz they’re so big and magical and shit they’re economically unsound to fish or farm on a commercial level, so shit is  _ hard - to - get _ . Actually,” - he pops a piece into his mouth - “caught this motherfucker all by my lonesome.”

“It’s amazing,” says Lup, smiling across the table at him. She’s beautiful, now maybe more than when she was alive because she’s never tired or sick or hungry the way she was, often, when he knew her before. That grin could have sent every battle wagon in Goldcliff sailing over the edge at the worst of times, and now -

They don’t look so much alike, anymore, not since Wonderland. Taako smiles back at her and looks down at his plate, starting delicately to mop up the sauce with a piece of bread. Lup turns to Barry. “Baby, help me finish this.”

“I really…”

“Barry, c’mon,” she laughs, and then, under her breath, “can you just be cool for two seconds?”

“You killed a giant luth on your own?” murmurs Kravitz, frowning. Taako looks up at him in surprise. “How’d you get it back here?”

“No big,” says Taako, “ch’boy’s got a lot of free time these days.” He spears the last bit of turtle meat with relish. It’s delicious. No wonder they tried hunting these little fuckers or their cousins or whoever to extinction. Kravitz is frowning at him, food untouched. Barry and Lup work their way through dutifully to the bottom of the plate.

“Taako, sweetheart, you’re magnificent,” Lup tells him. “Truly. I cannot believe the feast you’ve laid out for my undeserving shithead of a husband here and myself, and it really does pain me to say it, but I  _ must  _ take him home. I have to or he will dissolve into your table.”

“The night’s just starting,” Taako says. “Look, I made this fuckin’ - there’s cheesecake. Who’s gonna help me drink all this pinot grigio?”

“I mean this is in the kindest possible way, my _ dear _ brother,” says Lup, “the sun is going to be in this room in about twelve goddamn seconds and you’re tired.  _ We’re  _ tired. Also you  _ know  _ I’m a sauvignon blanc girl, so what gives?”

“I’m not tired,” says Taako, “fuck that.”

Kravitz takes his plate quietly and gets to his feet, starting to clear the table. Barry tugs at his collar, staring into his lap.

“You guys can sleep here,” Taako volunteers. “I have all this fuckin’ room, you know, no one to fill it but Kravitz and a giant smoked magic turtle.”

Lup leans across the table and kisses his cheek.

“Thanks, Taako,” she says, “we’ll head off. It’s been lovely, sincerely, and I can’t wait to see you at the wedding next weekend.” She squeezes his hand, then, and turns.

Taako walks them to the door a little numbly, only starting to realise he’s drunk when he physically stumbles past the threshold of the kitchen. The other amazing thing about undeath, he thinks, surreptitiously bitter, is how alcohol doesn’t hit you the same anymore. You could just drink and drink and drink. And to his surprise Lup was right - the sky is lightening outside already, birds starting to twitter and chirp. She’s gently iridescent in the sunrise, blue and pink and gold, and he smacks her clumsily on the back when she leans in to hug him.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t stay longer,” she says. “Get some rest, bro.”

Barry gives him an awkward one-armed squeeze and he waves them off. A block down, Barry takes her hand in one of his and pulls his scythe with the other, and they step through into the rift, leaving behind a gentle shimmer, a faint ball or two of pale light like dandelion puffs drifting to the ground. The sun breaks through the clouds and Taako blinks. How long’s he been standing there?

Kravitz is finishing the washing up by the time he drags himself back inside.

“Eight hours,” he says, to the spice rack.

“What?”

“They sat there and listened to your stories and ate your food for eight  _ hours _ , Taako. It’s six in the morning.”

“We got a late start,” mumbles Taako, a little wounded, and hoists himself up to sit on the table.

“How many more courses did you even have planned? No, wait, I don’t care.” He turns to look at Taako, and rather than the hostility Taako expects written across his handsome dark face is confusion and worry and maybe even fear. Taako looks back at him, eyes lidded, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other in a clumsy approximation of coquetry. “Is this what you’ve been doing all night? When I’m not here?”

“Cooking? I mean, it’s kind of my whole steez, broski, so I can’t say I fully appreciate the righteous alarm you’re sending my way -”

“The monster,” Kravitz says, “where did you go to find that?”

Taako frowns, uncrosses his legs and crosses them again, looks away. “Darling, please remember who you’re talking to. I can handle a big fucking fish, okay?”

“I’m  _ concerned  _ -”

“Don’t be,” says Taako, more sharply than he meant to. Kravitz stiffens, blinks at him once, twice, turns back to the dishes. There’s a pause. Taako tries again, more gently. “I’m doing great, Krav, I’m just fuckin’ standing in my truth over here, okay? I wanted to try cooking one and there was nothing else to do. I can handle my shit. I can handle it. I can handle it, okay?”

Kravitz sighs, long and forlorn.

“Besides, was it not fucking incredible?”

“It was good,” agrees Kravitz, and Taako slips off the table, goes to him, rests his cheek against his back and wraps his arms around him. “You’re completely blasted, Taako.”

“Hazards of being alive and shit.”

Kravitz turns in his arms, takes Taako’s face between his hands, tilts it up towards him. Taako blinks at him, smiles, and Kravitz leans down to kiss him.

“You’re cold as hell,” murmurs Taako, against Kravitz’s mouth. “Siberian fuckin’ tundra up in here. Hey, you ever seen the northern lights?”

“I love you,” Kravitz replies, and Taako laughs.

-

He got the ending he deserved, the one, he supposes, he wanted, but still he finds himself zoning out in the middle of conversations, coming back to himself in front of a class with no memory of how he got there or what these people expect from him, picking fights with strangers in bars. He makes flimsy excuses to avoid Magnus and Merle, to start moving on, to forget. It's time for the rest of his life, now. There was a time Taako really could have taken or left it - life, and the world and whatever. Things aren't like that anymore, he tells himself, luckily, because this whole situation might get to be a real fucking drag otherwise.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a long, long time, this was all he was. He had even forgotten his long-ago dream of conducting, he thinks now, before something made him tell Taako.

  
It’s been the better part of a decade, but Glamour Springs is by and large unchanged. He wouldn’t let it show for anything in the world, but Taako’s pulse is pounding in his ears he steps out of his carriage. It’s strange to think that there was a time he looked forward to seeing this place. It looked forward to seeing him.

Now, when they recognise Taako, townspeople hurry past nervously, pulling behind them children too young to remember. A little gnome girl catches his eye and smiles shyly; maybe she'd lost a sibling or a parent. It was only seven years ago. Taako is crossing the street to the police station, pushing open the door, filling out the requisite paperwork, ignoring the uncertain glances from the officer at the desk. He's running on autopilot as she leads him through to the little town’s penitentiary, to the spare little ward, to the window, watching himself from behind. Sazed’s face is hazy and out of focus. He's aged, a little, and he's clean-shaven now, and shorter-haired. Taako's fingers twitch in his lap.

“I didn't think I'd ever see you again,” says Sazed, after a long silence.

“It's your lucky day, I guess,” says Taako. There's a pause, then he sees himself smile and lean forward, chin in his palm. It should be gratifying to see Sazed flinch minutely away, but it isn't. “Whatcha been up to, my man? How's it hanging?”

Sazed swallows. “I've been here nearly a year,” he says. “I came back after I heard...you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I hadn't cooked for all this time,” he says quietly, nearly whispers. “I work in the kitchens here, now.”

His words seem to be coming from a long, long way away. His voice is exactly the way it was. The feeling is impossible to parse: the Taako Sazed knew (the Taako that Taako knew), a reckless amateur magician with nobody to watch his back, nothing to tie him down; the Taako who's real, a stranger to both of them, a genius wizard, planar scientist, dimension-hopper, beloved brother; and between them, an impassable hundred-year wall. Taako is still confused, sometimes, trying to pinpoint the here and now. Last year was The Hanging Arcaneum, and soon they'll have to leave again, before the Hunger destroys everything; but then he doesn't know these idiots, can't place Lup anywhere in his lonely childhood under this lonely sun, just wants to cook and be left alone. And now he just hovers somewhere above himself and tries not to think at all, untethered in space and time. He remembers telling Barry this, maybe eighty years ago or maybe ten or maybe this morning, we’re technically homeless. And then, defensively, over his shoulder as he walked away, everybody else is just dust. Taako looks up at Sazed again, at the heavy brow and the dark eyes and the handsome square jaw, and the features won't coalesce into a face. Taako smiles. “Why don't you tell me about it?”

“I got as far away as I could,” says Sazed. “I moved around every few months - around the coasts, you know. I worked on docks, mostly. I - I used to have these days - I'd be so sure you knew what I'd done, that you were looking for me, that I wouldn't get away.” He gives a raw little laugh. “I was going crazy, you know.”

“No kidding,” Taako says, vaguely.

“I'm kind of relieved to see you. Actually, I can't - I'm so - I always wanted to…” Sazed’s voice is cracking. “Taako, I was so fucked up back then, I was so stupid. I should never -” He starts to cry. Taako doesn't move a muscle. “Even if I never found out what you - even if you were who I thought you were, it would've been a mistake. And knowing now - what I could've...Taako, I didn't want this. I didn't want any of it.”

There's a stain on the wall behind Sazed’s head that kind of looks like a pig. Taako wonders if it'll be too late, once he gets out of here, to swing by the market on the way home and grab some stuff for dinner. He wonders if Kravitz has ever had pork belly - he doesn't remember cooking it for him before. Probably pork belly hadn't even been invented back when he was alive. Lately Taako’s been trying to surprise Kravitz with new ingredients and flavour profiles wherever he can, which is delightfully easy, because Kravitz doesn't really eat unless Taako wants him to and hasn't, very much, for hundreds of years, and so to him almost everything is a novelty. He'd never even tried crab, which was frankly offensive. But Taako likes showing off, likes to educate, likes Kravitz’s receptiveness to the things Taako cares about. He imagines Kravitz’s face when he tastes pork belly for the first time, and the image makes him smile. He wills himself to his lovely mahogany dining table, opposite Kravitz, watching his elegant hands gesticulating as he relates some anecdote, his eyes lighting up as he tastes a new dish for the first time. Taako's there, in Neverwinter, listening and watching and smiling and safe. Sazed is weeping, horribly, into his hands, and back in Glamour Springs, simultaneously, Taako is a little grossed out, trying not to watch.

“I'm so sorry, Taako. I'm sorry. I've wanted to tell you that so long -”

Is there even food in the Astral Plane? There must not be, or Kravitz wouldn’t be so weird about eating in the Material one. Taako considers their upcoming vacation. Maybe they can get groceries before they go, grill some eel on the eternal flames of hellfire. A picnic on that rainbow lake of souls or whatever would be awesome. Can you take food there, though? Will he need it?

“I ruined everything,” says Sazed. “Those people - there were kids at that show -”

“Well, I didn't taste it,” says Taako, surprising both of them. He doesn't seem to need to be present, really. It's been like that a lot lately. “It's whatever, I mean, tiny blip in Taako's amazing journey, right? I wasn't chasing you, man, I never even suspected. You knew I wouldn't, right? I'd basically forgotten until the police guy here wrote me.”

“Right,” says Sazed, thickly. It doesn't matter that it isn't true. Both of them wanted him to mean it. (Taako is drying dishes as Kravitz washes. Kravitz is humming something, trying not to laugh when Taako starts beatboxing along. The pleasant smell of their dinner lingers around them.)

“Kinda fucked up for me to be here making you feel better,” says Taako, and Sazed laughs, weakly.

“You were always like that, though,” he murmurs. “Never passed up a chance to be better.” Neverwinter evaporates. The ward lurches.

“Okay,” says Taako, “actually, this sucks. It's cool that you said what you had to and shit, but I'm gonna go and also, go fuck yourself.” He stands and is suddenly overtaken by a wave of nausea, staggers. Behind the glass Sazed gets to his feet as well, arms outstretched, automatically, even after all this time; but then the guard is at Taako’s side and he's being escorted back out to the station lobby, and Sazed is gone.

Outside, Taako drains his waterskin in one long swig, calls his driver, then vomits painfully into a trash can.

-

Work’s been busy since the world didn’t end. The world of the living overflows, yes, with gratitude and love and joy, but the mess left by the war in the Astral Plane takes the better part of a year for Kravitz to clean up even with the help of his new recruits, and it seems no amount of symbolic hope and renewal will keep wayward souls from transgression after that. Fortunately, perhaps, or Kravitz would be out of a job. He likes serving the Raven Queen, likes scaring the pants off the simpering little cowards who think they're above the laws of nature, likes to gamble and win, and he's good at it. For a long, long time, this was all he was. He had even forgotten his long-ago dream of conducting, he thinks now, before something made him tell Taako.

Taako doesn't know how old he is, who his parents were, where he grew up, what led him to such a singular career path. He doesn't seem to care to know. Taako knows, though, about Kravitz’s passion for ornithology. He knows that, although Kravitz can alter almost anything about his appearance with next to no effort, he makes it a point to launder and press his suits by hand. He knows that Kravitz’s favourite colour is blue, that he can't stand cheaters, that he won't eat zucchini but loves spicy food. Taako knows, Kravitz is fairly certain, that in all his years reaping there's never been another mortal like this for him. Taako, and only Taako, knows these things.

And so it's strange, staying away from the Material Plane for so long, playing Death flame-eyed and single-minded while he carries inside himself a small, secret personhood, someone who helps select paint colours for a new kitchen and who acquiesces to tasteful silk pyjamas and who laughs idiotically at every lazy boner joke he's told, someone who belongs, only, frighteningly, to Taako.

Taako takes Kravitz back to his room the night of Carey and Killian’s wedding. He hasn't stopped holding Kravitz’s hand, and it takes him a moment to fumble for his keys and get the door open with just the one; Kravitz leans in to press his lips to his cheek as the door shuts behind them and Taako turns to him and wraps his arms around his neck and kisses him long and soft and wanting. The only sounds are of their footsteps to the bedroom, the rustle of sheets, of Taako's breath hitching as Kravitz kisses his throat. It’s started to rain outside. Kravitz pulls back slowly and Taako looks up at him in the dark unsmiling, unspeaking, for several long moments, one hand at the nape of his neck and the other on his shoulder. There's something unsteady, something exposed in that look, in his silence; he's offering Kravitz something, asking a question he can't articulate. Kravitz wants to accept. Wants to tell him yes. Instead he leans down to kiss Taako again.

Kravitz sleeps, eventually, and wakes early, still tangled up in Taako, Taako’s cheek to his chest and arms around his waist. Kravitz is overwhelmed momentarily, embarrassingly, by the sight of his long elfin ear flattened and poking out under the back of his head; affectionately he reaches to smooth pale hair from Taako’s forehead and elicits a sleepy little hum.

“It didn't stop,” he mumbles, still half-asleep or maybe three-quarters.

“Hmm?”

“Your heartbeat,” says Taako, and wriggles closer against him. “It kept going all night.”

He’s asleep again before long, lulled by the rain still falling on the Stillwater Sea outside his window and the steady rise and fall of Kravitz’s chest. Kravitz can’t stay. It was irresponsible enough to take the whole day before for the wedding. In sleep Taako’s face looks different, more severe, older, maybe. Taako has spent a hundred years flitting between universes, created something that could alter the makeup of the entire world and then destroyed it, has resisted the thrall of creation’s light and challenged hopelessness and nihilism and despair itself and has won. It’s easier to believe of him when he’s like this. Kravitz buttons his collar, shrugs into his jacket and smooths it out. He sits beside Taako on the bed, leans down, presses a kiss to the top of his head. Taako doesn’t stir. Kravitz is very, very quiet as he leaves.

When Taako left the Moonbase for his new digs in Neverwinter, he gave Kravitz a key as casually as he might have given him an empty Fantasy Coke can on his way to the recycling. He never tried to clarify this arrangement and still, a year later, resists Kravitz’s attempts to do so. Certainly cohabitation is too strong a word. It's a good week for Kravitz when he has even a couple of nights to spend in Taako’s bed, and even then there's no guarantee Taako, himself swamped in hard-won success and adoration and prior commitments, will be available to keep him company. Kravitz knows him well enough to appreciate that Taako is giving as much of himself as he can. He's never minded letting Taako set the pace, has all the time in the world to follow. But still, he misses him more than he thought possible, and Kravitz is not used to that feeling. Not sure how okay he is with it. He doesn’t know what to make of the idea of his heart beating, unconsciously, involuntarily, for Taako.

And it’s not as though Kravitz misses the aspiring conductor, from all those years ago - he barely even remembers him. But it was so easy for Taako to push that door open, and how many others has he stumbled through since? What kind of strange, vulnerable creature will Kravitz be, once Taako’s finished disassembling him?

So he works. He strikes deals. He guides the frightened and the angry and the lost, corrals the arrogant, the rule-breakers, the occultists and the romantics and the powermongers. He patrols the Eternal Stockade for hour upon long, lonely hour.

It's there that Lup finds him, the day before their vacation. He senses, but doesn't hear her approach. “Lup,” he greets her, in an accent, without turning.

“Hey, Krav,” she says, and falls into step beside him, smiling up at him through the darkness. “How's our favourite horde of vengeful spirits tonight?”

“Still wracked by endless suffering,” says Kravitz. “You know how it goes.”

“Ain't that just the way.”

“Are you and Barry doing all right?”

“Never better,” says Lup cheerfully. “You know, he was a little whiny to start with about having to reprise the whole terrifying-spectre-of-death role, but I think he's started finding his feet. That raspy ghost voice he does is pretty on point now. He made an old halfling dude piss his pants yesterday.”

“Glad to hear it,” says Kravitz dryly. A piercing, otherworldly wail issues from somewhere above; he bangs on the ceiling with his scythe and it stops. “So to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Kinda harsh,” says Lup. “I can't stop in on my boss without some ulterior motive?”

“Please don't call me that, Lup.”

“My respected associate, whatever. Maybe I just like your company.”

Kravitz says nothing, but raises an eyebrow at her. Lup grins back, then coughs and looks away.

“How long have you been on shift, anyway, my man? Not to put too fine a point on it, you look fucking terrible.”

“First of all, that's a lie,” says Kravitz.

“I’m just saying I can take over here for a while if you need me to,” Lup says. “I mean, do you even know what time it is?”

“I mean, time in the Astral Plane doesn't necessarily -”

“In Neverwinter,” she ploughs on, “it's around about dinner time.” She shoots him a pointed sideways look, and he sighs. “I know you're nervous or whatever, but this week’s gonna be rad. And between you and me - I mean, I don't wanna stick my nose where it doesn't belong, but my brother’s been spending a helluva lot of time alone lately.”

Kravitz comes to a halt, bracing himself against his scythe. Lup softens, pushes back her hood and comes closer.

“I don't know what else to do,” says Kravitz quietly, dropping the accent. “I don't know how to be around - the living, you know. I don't remember how it worked - how I worked. It's been hard, and I don't feel like...I'm not making anything better, Lup.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” says Lup, with a little smile. “Also, not to denigrate your struggle or anything, but as far as tolerance for supernatural bullshit goes, I'd say Taako’s up there.”

Kravitz laughs, reluctantly.

“Stuff’s gonna stay kinda fucked up for a while,” says Lup gently. “Not forever, though.”

“I know that,” says Kravitz, irritated. There's a rumble of agitation from above, and he cracks the scythe abruptly against the cold stone floor, sending an earsplitting clap resounding around the fortress. The rumble dies away, but Lup doesn't flinch. “Forever,” he continues, turning to face her, “doesn't worry me.”

“Tight,” she says. “So how about you clock out for the day? I can make loud noises and shit.”

Kravitz pauses a long time, then draws a rift in the air between them. Taako’s living room appears, empty, its warm light almost unnatural against the Stockade’s grim walls. The portal isn't entirely opaque, and on its other side he sees Lup smile.

“See you tomorrow,” he says. She blows a kiss, turns to shriek something at her unruly prisoners, and is gone. Almost as soon as he steps through, Kravitz smells something delicious; he pulls off his cloak and goes to the kitchen, and when Taako looks up and grins at him, “yo, had they figured out pork belly back in the time of the dinosaurs or whatever? Because I'm pretty fucking sure I'm about to blow your mind, grandpa,” Kravitz could swear he feels his heart skip a beat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kravitz has never been given to sentimentality when it comes to living, as an abstract philosophical concept, to life - in his line of work, it would be inadvisable - but, surrounded by so much of it, by blood and guts and hair and teeth, by cheerful voices pushed forth by lungs contracting and expanding again without even a whisper of conscious effort, by eating and drinking and breathing, by trees and grass and bees and butterflies and flowers, by this resolutely silly and small and naive determination to overvalue this tiny and finite fragment of the eternal uncaring universe, Death feels like he could start to understand the impulse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning:  
> There's a minor character in this chapter who is creepy and sexually inappropriate towards a minor. There's no sexual violence or coercion and the character doesn't appear for very long, but please tread carefully.

Kravitz hasn’t celebrated a birthday in a very long time. He doesn’t remember the date, or even, more morbidly but still acceptably, the date of his death. This seems to offend Taako terribly, although Kravitz suspects that he is playing up his sense of scandal in order to sell Kravitz on the idea of a party. “Just pick a date,” Taako insists, “any date, it doesn’t matter. Oh, could we make it like, next month? Fall in Neverwinter is idyllic as hell, foliage and shit. How old would you be turning?”

“I have no idea,” Kravitz says, laughing, “maybe - six hundr-?”

“- and thirty-three, I think, right,” confirms Taako, and grins. “On the seventh of November. Scorpio, huh? Wouldn’t have pegged you for it, but that’s cool, my man, the heavens work mysteriously and whatever. I can see it, I can see it.”

In reality, Kravitz doesn’t really need convincing. He does find the fake birthday pretext a little silly, but coming home to a different practise cake every night is nothing to complain about. If the furor of planning menus and decorating and designing invitations seems, to Kravitz, a little excessive, he doesn’t let Taako know it. It’s been months, now, since Taako came home towing a dead direwolf or owlbear or lord-knows-what and laughing derisively at Kravitz’s questions, since Kravitz last found him curled up asleep on the kitchen floor in the morning, too small in his big linen smock, smelling of alcohol, since he was woken in the night by the shaking of Taako’s shoulders as he tried to wait out another panic attack in silence, and so if, by comparison, obsessive party-planning is the next stage of whatever it is Taako needs to work through, it’s okay with Kravitz. And it could be his imagination, but it seems there’s something almost sheepish in the sudden spotlight Taako’s turned on him, something apologetic. Kravitz doesn’t need Taako’s remorse, but still he shows his appreciation at every opportunity, and for some time they’re careful with each other this way, laughing a little too much at each other’s jokes and making time for luxuriant breakfasts in bed on the weekends. The nights lengthen. The city begins to turn orange and pink and red around them. Warm and comfortable and pleasantly tired, lying, one evening, on Taako’s couch with the novel Lucretia recommended the last time they spoke, Kravitz listens to Taako laughing into his Stone of Farspeech as he potters around the kitchen, and he catches himself, with bemusement, as he thinks how nice it is to spend a night relaxing at home.

On the day Magnus is first to arrive, twenty minutes early. Taako, inside, is busy with rushing to and fro, wailing theatrically about his unpreparedness, a patient Ren at his side with every utensil ready almost before he asks for it, and so Kravitz is left to play host. The garden out the back overlooks the city’s bright sprawl over gentle hills, and beyond that the Neverwinter River, sparkling in the autumn sunlight. Magnus surveys the garden admiringly as Kravitz seats him under the ostentatious marquee, accepts the drink he’s awkwardly offered. “I didn’t know Taako gardened,” he says.

Kravitz laughs. “No, he absolutely hires someone. He does carry on like it’s all his own handiwork, though, whenever anyone comes around.”  
  
“Figures,” says Magnus.

“He grows herbs himself, though,” says Kravitz, “inside. He got those set up before he even bought a bed.”

“I could put in some time out here,” says Magnus distantly. “He doesn’t have to pay some stranger.” There’s a pause while Kravitz waits, uncertainly, for him to continue, but Magnus just takes a swig of beer and smiles. “So how old are you turning?”

“Six hundred and thirty-three,” says Kravitz easily, and grins back.

By the time the last stragglers show up - Merle, already pretty drunk but with the surprisingly thoughtful and totally unnecessary gift of a pair of fancy pearl cufflinks, apparently farmed locally in Bottlenose Cove; Lucas, who Kravitz is fairly sure wasn't actually invited and still acts like he's bestowing an act of great generosity by his attendance - the river below is a blinding golden orange, the sunset casting long shadows across the garden and forcing partygoers to squint. Taako is in his element. Kravitz watches as him work the crowd expertly, insinuating himself into conversations where he sparkles with enough practised, impersonal charm and wit to dazzle the most cynical guest, slipping away at exactly the right moment behind an outburst of appreciative laughter to refill another drink or gossip with another ex-colleague or disappear into the kitchen. He’s barely sat down since the morning. Even though he knows this evening is as much for Taako as for himself - it’s obvious in every meticulously presented platter, every show-stopping enchanted grin, in his satisfied exhaustion itself - Kravitz is grateful for the effort. Lucretia and Angus, who arrived together, sit deep in conversation with Paloma, who's critiquing Angus’s cantrips. Killian gets quietly but steadily drunker as Carey, sitting to her right, and Jess, to her left, try to out-badass each other. Out on the lawn, Brad is attempting to lead what looks like a significantly more complicated version of frisbee, but only Avi is paying much attention. Kravitz has never been given to sentimentality when it comes to living, as an abstract philosophical concept, to life - in his line of work, it would be inadvisable - but, surrounded by so much of it, by blood and guts and hair and teeth, by cheerful voices pushed forth by lungs contracting and expanding again without even a whisper of conscious effort, by eating and drinking and breathing, by trees and grass and bees and butterflies and flowers, by this resolutely silly and small and naive determination to overvalue this tiny and finite fragment of the eternal uncaring universe, Death feels like he could start to understand the impulse. The sensation is so unfamiliar and so complete it’s almost violent, and it takes a spell for him to recognise it as happiness.

-

In the corner furthest from the kitchen is a heavy wooden chest overflowing with wrinkled tunics and faded frocks Taako’s never seen his aunt wear. A pair of sensible clogs sits beside the front door, and beside them, Taako’s scuffed lace-up boots, a little big for a boy his age. There’s a bookshelf and a single comfortable armchair, with the ugliest floral upholstery Taako’s ever seen, next to the oven. There’s a rickety outhouse around the back, just one awkward clamber over the mess of gnarled roots and vegetables and dandelions away when you need it in the middle of the night. But the cottage’s centrepiece is undeniably its kitchen, with its formidable stacks of jars and jugs and bottles of who-knows-what secret spice blends and flours and oils, with its towers of soup-splattered cookbooks, its herbs growing in their little windowsill pots, with pans and utensils dangling precariously from their hooks and crashing, sometimes, to the floor in the night, and eliciting a chorus of screeches and rustles and flaps from the bats who hang out in the lemon tree outside the window.

‘Cottage’, though, is almost too generous a word for the two-room building where Aunt Sabrina lives. She doesn’t even own a bed; at night, the two of them sit side-by-side, cross-legged in the moonlight, and Taako struggles to empty his mind of thoughts of how comfortable that woven rush mat would be for napping, or what happened to the cute half-elf who used to deliver their mail and has been replaced with a grumpy older lady, or why exactly peanut butter on bread is an acceptable breakfast but not, for some reason, peanut butter cookies. His aunt never gets angry with him when she has to shake him awake in the mornings, even though he should have been meditating through the night with no problems for at least a couple of years by now. Sabrina forgives him a lot of bullshit, actually.

But this won’t be forever. Taako knows that his aunt was old, even for an elf, long before he was born. Her coughing comes in long, violent fits now, and sometimes, when she thinks he’s preoccupied peeling potatoes or stirring soup, he sees that she’s drifted off to sleep in her chair. And Taako has spent enough time with various second cousins and schoolmasters and grouchy ‘friends’ of the family to know that the time he spends here, living on her generosity, is borrowed. Wry, guarded and prematurely tough, having survived more than his share of hungry days and cold, dangerous nights, Taako is not a charming or demonstrative child. But now he finds himself wanting more and more to tell her, somehow, that he feels at home here, to make himself vulnerable, to ask if he can stay. He could take care of her garden - he could make it prettier, he’s sure; he could bake the bread she sells at the markets; he’d even buy a bed for her, if she’d keep him.

This is what Taako’s thinking as he clears away the dirty dishes, on the night before his twelfth birthday. The tiny house is overcrowded with distant family members, ostensibly, he supposes, here to celebrate, but not paying him very much attention. He’d rather be ignored by these people, though, than have to try and be civil. Mostly everyone’s just drinking and circling each other with barely-disguised hostility. He can hear his aunt coughing.

“This blows,” says someone, and Taako, though he knows he’s alone in the little kitchen, though the voice is strange and unfamiliar, doesn’t startle. “Should’ve sucked up some more.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he says quietly, scrubbing away at a particularly heinous pot. “It’s not because she _wants_ me gone.”

“We don’t ask for a lot,” says his companion. “Even if she beefs it, we’d be okay here, right? I guess we’d get kicked out, though, this place wouldn’t be ours. Bet they’d tear it down.”

Taako’s got a headache. He sets down the pot and looks around, but the kitchen is empty. The voice doesn’t return, and now, actually, he doesn't know what it sounded like, can't be sure he heard anything at all. He's losing it.

“It wouldn’t be mine,” he says to himself, frowning, trying to set the imbalance right. “It’s not mine.”

That night, after the last guests leave in a flurry of passive-aggressive niceties and slightly-too-hard cheek-pinching, Aunt Sabrina falls asleep in her chair. He takes just one dress from the chest, a chunk of bread, his favourite little pot, a paring knife. No one comes looking.

-

There are still moments, and Kravitz knew there would be. Trying to be alive again is not easy. Taako, even at his best, is not easy. Kravitz wasn’t lying when he told Lup that _forever_ didn’t worry him - he’s had more time than most to come to terms with the idea, and with its incomprehensibility, and it’s not as though he was pulled into Taako’s mortal orbit passive and unawares. He chose to be part of this particular finite life and all its hardships, and Taako likes having him around, and that’s nice. But this new Kravitz, the one who eats and sleeps and breathes, who lets himself be consumed by silly, mortal joy and companionship and love, rests at his very core on Taako and with every pretended laugh and every question he lets Taako avoid and every night he spends in the Astral Plane with paperwork that doesn’t really need looking at before morning, Kravitz grows more keenly aware that those foundations are hollow, at least a little bit, that they can’t hold him indefinitely, that Taako’s going to buckle under his weight and both of them will feel it.

“Can I ask you something?”

Taako was bent over the kitchen counter, midmorning, Sunday, studying preliminary merch designs, pen in his mouth. Kravitz, curled up on the couch across the room, didn't look up from his book. “Hmm?”

“It's about work,” said Taako. “I was wondering how much you know about, um, mortals and shit. Like, if you can see - if you know when someone's gonna go.”

(The thing that bothers him, probably, isn’t Taako’s dishonesty or his unwillingness to be vulnerable, it isn’t his difficulty, because Kravitz knows and has always known that he can take it, that he’ll take whatever Taako needs him to, that Taako is worth it.)

Kravitz looked up at him in surprise. Taako’s back was turned to him, his ears tilted slightly against his head, betraying the nonchalance in his voice. Kravitz straightened up, slowly, lowering his book.

“Not usually,” he said carefully. “I mean - most people don't need help finding their way to the Astral Plane, when it's time. It's more my role to keep them in line once they're there, patrol those borders, iron out discrepancies. I mean, outside of bounty hunting and what have you.”

“Sure, sure,” said Taako. He took the pen out of his mouth and scribbled something on a piece of butcher’s paper. “I guess it'd be the same with Lup and Barry.”

(The thing is that sooner or later Kravitz will have to put down roots of his own. That if his heart’s going to beat without his command, that if he’s going to feel, it can’t just be for Taako. This is what he could not explain to Lup: he’s afraid.)

“I guess,” said Kravitz slowly, frowning. There was a pause. “Is something bothering you? Taako, is there someone you're worried about? I assure you - if it's Merle -”

“Hm?” Taako looked up at him over his shoulder with enough genuine bemusement that Kravitz wondered if he had imagined it. “No, baby, just curious. There's a lot I don't know about the field, you know? As it were.”

“Right,” said Kravitz.

“You go ahead and keep your deathly secrets and whatever, I'm cool. It'd be pretty dope, though, huh?” Taako erased something, blew residue off the page. “Knowing.”

(Taako had tried to show him something that night, after the wedding. He’d wanted to ask a question. Kravitz had known, had wanted to answer, but he let it pass. What was it that stopped him?)

“What are you working on?” Kravitz said abruptly, rising from the couch, leaving his book behind. Taako smiled, spun on his stool to face Kravitz, stretched his arms high over his head.

“Nothing important,” he said, and beckoned Kravitz to him.

-

The party is comprised of a paladin, a barbarian, a wizard and a bard. With each other they're swaggering, abrasive, usually drunk, always affecting a broad and battle-hardened geniality intended to remind their companions of the thin ice they’re skating, that their good humour is always conditional and god forbid you should lose it. Generally they act as though he isn't there, which suits Taako fine. It's safer this way.

In exchange for a place on their caravan, Taako cooks. Three meals a day, for the five of them, sometimes wild poultry or venison or the odd fresh fish Taako catches when they stop by a stream, most often lentils and mushrooms and cheese. It’s been years since he left his aunt’s, but he still carries her lessons with him in blended spices and rabbit traps and potted herbs and vegetables he ties to the caravan’s windowsills to catch the sunlight as they traverse the countryside. He’s long since outgrown his childish habit of dozing off at night and sits instead near the front of the cabin, eyes lidded and hands folded in his lap, staring out into the night, aware only semi-consciously of the stars’ slow journey across the sky. He’s the only elf onboard, but he’s had years of practise drowning out snores much more heinous than these on caravans much more rickety. And as the sun rises he’ll pick some wild greens and a little of his parsley and maybe he’ll fry some leftover meat and some eggs, if he’s lucky enough to have them, and the smell of sizzling pork fat will get to his generous benefactors before their hangovers do. All considered, it’s not a bad gig.

Once, there was an ambush. Taako had heard the footsteps approach, the whispers, but no sooner had he turned back into the cabin than he was face to face with a bandit with knife drawn. Taako opened his mouth to cry out but the knife struck him in the stomach and he was winded and fell, dead weight, over the driver’s seat and out of the carriage. Survival instinct overpowering rational thought, he lay there in the dewy grass with his eyes closed and tried hard not to breathe too loudly or to think about the pain, the wetness pooling in his tunic, or to cry. There was a struggle, a short, strangled yell, the sound of a blunt impact, and a body fell beside him. Another of the bandits shouted from close by - too close - and Taako heard a confusion of footfalls, arrows whizzing, metal clashing, and then nothing. He woke warm and dry again, with wound bandaged and his head on something soft.

“Don’t try to move yet,” someone murmured. The caravan was moving again, the sun high outside the window. Taako noticed with a pang that his potted basil hadn’t survived the scuffle. “I had Lady Pious over there do what she could, but it’ll take time to heal completely.”

“I tried to yell,” said Taako. “They were too quick.”

“Don’t worry about it.” It was the wizard, whom he’d heard speak seldom enough that he hadn’t been able, at first, to place the voice. A tiefling, probably not more than ten years older than Taako, with long, gnarled horns and shrewd eyes. “The cargo’s safe, and so are you. Get better quickly. Everyone else is too scared to touch your vegetables.”

So, no, Taako doesn’t trust any of them as far as he could throw them. But since then, he’s paid close attention to the wizard as he eats, taken note of favourite sauces and of untouched vegetables, and sometimes when they pass through town and Taako gets to visit a real honest-to-goodness market, he’s sure to save the best cuts of meat he can afford for one bowl in particular.

Today has been a good day for the party, who, after weeks of wild goose chases, sidequests and strategic retreats, have finally tracked down and slaughtered the rogue mayor-turned-necromantic cultist they were hired to investigate. While the heroes enjoy the rewards of their victory at the local inn, Taako sits alone in the caravan, chopping blanched almonds, humming to himself. It’s likely the party will split after this, and Taako doesn’t know what’ll happen when they do, where he’ll go. Maybe it’s time for him to settle someplace, find some shitty kitchenhand job in some shitty inn, take a dingy rat-infested room in the city. But there’s a niggling inside him, an emptiness, and Taako can’t bring himself to believe this all he’s meant for.

There’s a hand on his shoulder. Taako startles and spins on the spot, gripping the knife, but it’s only the wizard, who smiles blandly. Taako can smell the alcohol on him; there’s even a charming flush on those otherworldly, dusky blue cheeks. Taako swallows, sets down the knife.

“What are you making?”

“Uh,” says Taako, “I’m gonna try, uh, macarons. It’s been a while, but I think I remember how. I was thinking of adding -” he looks away, pushes his hair back, flustered by the unwavering attention of the wizard’s stare - “um, elderflower.”

“Elderflower,” he repeats, quietly.

“Yeah, they’re good in sweet things. My aunt used to like soaking them with sugar and lemons a-and - oh -” The wizard has moved closer, has taken Taako’s long braid in his hands and started to examine it as if it might better explain the appeal of elderflower macarons, and now he’s bringing the tip of it to his lips, and Taako’s mouth is very dry.

“How old are you, Taako, again?”

“Sixteen,” Taako whispers, and the man smiles down at him and leans in.

“You’re very tough,” he says, and his grip on Taako’s hair suddenly becomes much too tight. “Very grown up.”

“Oh -”

And Taako can’t explain, when he thinks back on it later, what happened next: the caravan rocked, there was almond meal everywhere on the floor, and the wizard was snarling something and spewing embers and bleeding, Taako’s aunt’s paring knife sticking out of his arm (Taako _had_ been holding it, hadn’t he? He must have done it, somehow, without knowing), and Taako was scrambling past him and running, and though he could swear there was another pair of footsteps running alongside him, another pair of lungs panting, maybe even another sweaty hand holding his, there’s no doubt, now, that he spent the rest of that night alone, and the next night, and the next, and so many nights for so many years after.

-

The bracing crispness of the autumn air turns to chill, rolling slowly across the hills from the river. A few large earthenware wood stoves crackle merrily away at the edges of the marquee, gently illuminating the faces of Kravitz’s friends, now flushed with drink and the cold night air. At the other end of the table, Lucretia’s deep in conversation with Magnus, who’s talking quietly, trying to move as little as possible, to avoid disturbing Angus, who’s fallen asleep against his shoulder. Taako’s finally taken his seat beside Kravitz and is regaling anyone close enough to hear with the story of his heroic acquisition of the Flaming Poisoning Raging Sword of Doom. He leans across the table on his elbow, his butt off his seat, gesticulating wildly with his free hand and splashing wine here and there. “And he’s like, ‘you have no idea how much this thing is worth’. Fucker _just_ sold it to me for nine hundred! _Nine h-_ shit, it was good. Pretty much, uh, put Fantasy Costco outta business with that one, but I mean the world was ending and whatever. So like! Sorry, Garfield, I guess.”

“Garfield’s okay now, actually,” pipes up Lucretia from across the table, and Angus wrinkles his nose, and Magnus rubs his back. “He’s rebranded as Fantasy Target.”

“Oh shit,” says Taako, laughing. “He recovered!”

“A businessman like that,” she says wryly. “I’m sure he was never really threatened.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he was doing a booming trade up on the fucking moon,” says Taako, and sits back down, flopping against Kravitz’s side. “Real savvy. Where’s he, Goldcliff now?”

“Here and there,” she says mildly, and sips her champagne. “The Bureau isn’t so inhospitable to trade nowadays. We have a branch on the moon, as it happens, but he doesn’t come by that often anymore.”

“I bet,” says Taako, and yawns. “Well, I guess it’s cool I didn’t ruin his life completely or anything. Who wants fuckin’ macarons?”

A perfunctory little cheer goes up in patches around the table, and Taako takes some dirty dishes as he stands. Angus straightens up, taking off his glasses to rub his eyes, and Magnus’ gaze follows Taako to the kitchen. Kravitz finishes his glass of wine and smiles cordially at Lucas, with whom he’s been trying to have a polite conversation (he isn’t even trying to scare him anymore), before excusing himself to help. (Lucas is visibly relieved.) As he passes, Kravitz hears Angus tug at the Director’s sleeve and ask her something quiet, and she exhales softly through her nose and passes a hand absently through the boy’s hair, shaking her head. Magnus and she exchange a quiet glance.

In the kitchen Taako is scrubbing over the sink at a beautiful hand-glazed ceramic platter, something Kravitz gave him last Candlenights, with a little more gusto than probably is required. The pile of dirty dishes to his left is about a mile high; to his right, tupperware containing the most excessive cookies Kravitz has ever seen, complete with what looks like silver leaf decorating the shells in artful curls. Music from outside pumps mutedly in through the wide glass doors and Taako hums along, distracted. It’s one of Johann’s, Kravitz realises.

“Is that real silver?” he asks, more to fill the silence than anything.

“Oh, Krav, excuse me,” says Taako, a little breathlessly, without looking around. “Are you implying I would feed your honoured guests _imitation precious metals_?”

Kravitz smiles. “I guess not. Taako, you’re working so hard tonight.” He moves towards him, places a hand at the small of his back, and Taako looks up at him now over his shoulder, a little surprised, a little dour. His glamour, Kravitz realises, wore off as he retreated to the house; the lines around his eyes and mouth are more pronounced now, his eyelashes a little paler, his jaw sharper, less symmetrical. Kravitz takes the platter from Taako’s hands, reaches over to turn off the tap and leans down to kiss him, not very hard or aggressively, just for a couple of seconds. “Thank you,” he says, his hands on Taako’s shoulders, and Taako looks up at him with that lazy, sardonic smile, and Kravitz loves him and he loves him and with all the enormity and indifference of his death and the smallness and turmoil of Taako’s life he can’t imagine not loving him.

“It’s cool,” says Taako, pauses, and then swallows and continues. “I mean, can I be real for a second? You’re bein’ a sport about this all, I, I know. I dig that. I just, you know, I want -”

There’s a clunk, a quiet _oh_ , and a gust of cold air. Kravitz looks around, releasing Taako, who steps away and quickly recasts the glamour. Magnus is standing in the doorway, hulking and sheepish. “Uh, sorry,” he says quickly. “I didn’t think -”

“No, no,” says Kravitz, glancing sideways at Taako.

“Nothin’ to see here, amigo,” says Taako. “What’s up?”

“I was just coming in to help out with the dishes, actually,” says Magnus, embarrassedly. “You’ve been in here like, all night, Taako, you must be getting worn out.”

Taako says nothing for a moment - then, slowly, “that’s real sweet, Mags, thanks.” He tosses his friend a tea towel, which Magnus catches without blinking, and picks up the platter again, staring down into its elaborately painted surface for a second before he reaches over to turn the faucet back on. Magnus grabs a plate from the drying rack and gets to work, and they stand side by side like this in silence for a second before Magnus asks if that’s Johann’s Candlenights mixtape playing outside, and Taako laughs and admits that it is, and Magnus ribs him for holding onto it after all, and Kravitz realises he hasn’t seen the two of them together since the Day of Story and Song - not once. He clears his throat and moves towards the hallway.

“I’m gonna go make the guest beds,” he says easily, “it’s getting kind of late.”

Taako says “no, no, baby, go enjoy the party, I’ll get it” as Magnus says “cool, later”, and Kravitz shoots Taako a little smile and retreats back into the house.

-

It’s Sazed who first realises, that evening, that something has gone wrong. They are spending the night at Glamour Springs’ only inn, treating themselves, Taako declares, to a well-deserved break from the shoddy camper beds of the caravan. They got dinner on the house; the innkeeper’s teenage daughter is a fan of the show.

Sazed’s been sulking for weeks now, and Taako, who's had a gutfull, is quietly vindicated at the tremor in his voice when he comes knocking. “Taako,” he murmurs, through the door, “something's wrong.”

There's a commotion downstairs, though Taako can't make out any of the words. Chairs scraping, a thud, men talking in low, worried voices. When he opens the door, Sazed looks on the point of collapse, his face grey. An anguished yell comes from below, and Taako, stepping back to let Sazed inside, begins to put two and two together.

“The girl downstairs,” says Sazed hoarsely, “she's dying.”

“Right,” says Taako uncertainly.

“She was at the show,” says Sazed. “She ate the…”

There's a long silence. Taako swallows, staring vaguely downwards, at the logo on Sazed’s shirt. His own face, crudely cartooned but charming, grins back out at him. “I transmuted the elderberry,” he says, and his own voice sounds fuzzy and distant in his ears. “Nightshade looks just like it.”

Sazed pauses at this, gives Taako a quick, nervous glance. “What do we do? How many people ate that stuff?”

“We've gotta go,” says Taako, fighting down the hysteria bubbling in his chest. “We need to get out of h- take that fucking shirt off, Sazed, Jesus. Get our shit together and meet me at the wagon.”

Sazed leaves without a word, and Taako stands for a moment longer completely still, listening to the muffled sounds from downstairs. The front door swings open with a bang. A woman shouts; floorboards creak. There's a gnarled old tree beside Taako's window on the second storey. He has plenty of experience disappearing without a trace, though it's not a skill he particularly wanted to use again.

But it might be nothing, he thinks, as he goes to the wagon, unties the horses with thoughtless, perfunctory movements. It might not be the food. Maybe the girl isn't even that sick. (In a house nearby, Taako hears a door flung open, somebody scrambling towards the main road, calling for help, something's wrong with their mother, and he knows.)

They ride north long into the night, fast, saying nothing to each other. Before sunrise, Taako says “we'll have to ditch the wagon,” evenly enough to surprise himself. He helps Sazed drag it into the scrub, doesn't look back as they leave behind everything he's ever worked for. They don't stop for food until well into the next day, and when they do Taako won't touch the hotplate. “Your show now after all, huh,” he says ruefully, as Sazed stirs a depressing-looking lentil stew. Sazed doesn't reply, can't even look at him, and Taako thinks _oh well, that's fair_. He thinks, _I wouldn't have much to say to me either_. He thinks, _I let that boy look up to me_. When finally they stop to rest, the poor horses pushed to their limit, Sazed rolls himself up in the ratty cloak he's had since they first met and closes his eyes wordlessly. Taako just sits and stares into the fire a while.

“I didn't taste it,” he says, finally. “And if I had I probably would've known - you know - we could've gotten help in time. But I didn’t.” He pauses. “Do you think they all died?” Taako says, tinily.

There’s no response. He’s fallen asleep, Taako thinks, and slowly rocks up onto his knees, careful to make as little noise as possible, and crawls around the firepit. He eases himself down onto his side and curls into Sazed, closing his eyes tight, feeling numb all over, his head spinning. For a long time there’s nothing but the fire crackling at his back and the pounding of his pulse in his ears. Then Sazed slides an arm, awkwardly, under Taako’s neck and pulls him close inside the shitty old cloak Sazed’s going to take with him, when he goes, so Taako can keep the nice blankets Sazed’s labour helped buy, and his body is warm and familiar and secure, and although Taako won’t open his eyes and although Sazed is very quiet, Taako can feel him trembling as he cries.

It’s been just the two of them for a long time, and so there’s no way Sazed doesn’t know that Taako doesn’t sleep at night. But he’s still gentle when he disentangles himself early in the morning, laying Taako’s head carefully down in the grass, lingering there over him, hushing the horse as he secures his pack to the saddle, and Taako plays along, breathing slowly, keeping absolutely still, until Sazed is long gone, and it’s easier, for both of them, to fake it.

-

It’s late when Taako finally shuts the music off. He chose a beautiful night to celebrate Kravitz: the sky is absolutely clear and deep, velvet black, the moons high, high above like two pancakes faintly haloed in iridescent oil, and now in the early hours the air has stilled, and the silence and the dark enfold him like a blanket. Kravitz and Taako aside, the garden is empty. Lucretia was the last to leave, with Angus, half-asleep as he hugged Kravitz and then Taako once each around the waist. Inside, Magnus sleeps on the couch, Ren curls up on the fold-out bed in the study and Barry and Lup have retired to the guest room. And here, Taako’s standing with his back to Kravitz and one hand on the phonograph, staring out at the black river. It’s fucking cold.

Kravitz sits quietly, finishing his last drink, and, as per usual, he doesn’t push.

Taako takes in a deep breath and turns to face him with a smile. “So, first fuckin’ rager in six hundred years, huh? How’d you find it, birthday boy? Pretty goddamn choice, I imagine?”

“Yeah,” says Kravitz, “your hard work paid off.” He takes a sip of his shiraz and something ugly drops in Taako’s stomach, cold and hard. He stands in silence for a moment, and then starts to collect empty platters and glasses. He stacks as many dishes as he can carry, casts Levitate, and then begins another, working his way down the long tables. He’s pretty drunk, and the towers wobble haphazardly in the air as they follow him around the garden, but nothing falls.

“Cool,” he says, and turns to walk back up the slope into the house, where he lets the plates drop onto the kitchen counter with a flick of his fingertip and a clatter that makes Magnus snort in his sleep. Kravitz doesn’t follow, and Taako doesn’t especially want him to. Let him harden into ice out there if that’s what he wants to do. He runs a shower, scrubs his face for a long time under too-hot water, washes his hair, pukes but doesn’t feel any more clear-headed for it, just a little emptier, a little more dizzy. When he goes to the bedroom, Kravitz is already there, sitting on the side of the bed, staring into his lap. Resolutely, Taako hops onto the bed beside him and reclines on top of the covers, combing his damp hair out with his fingers, ignoring his obvious discontent.

“Taako,” says Kravitz. “I want to know -”

"What’s that, sweetheart?”

“I want to know,” he says again, more slowly, “what your problem is.”

Taako pauses at that, genuinely taken aback, his fingers stopping halfway through a knot. “My problem?”

“Don’t play coy,” says Kravitz, quietly. “What is it about this that’s making you so unhappy you need to antagonise everyone around you? What are you getting from that kind of attention that I can’t give you?”

“Uh,” says Taako, laughing nervously, “Jesus, Krav, what the fuck?” So he hasn’t been Fantasy Hubbell Fucking Gardiner, but the night was hardly disastrous enough for Kravitz to respond this tersely. In the kitchen, Magnus got weird and needy talking about Taako’s house and his garden like he wasn’t the one who moved out to the middle of fucking nowhere to train dogs, like an idiot, and Taako guesses his response to his friend’s romantic spiel wasn’t sufficiently compassionate because he started to cry into Taako’s clean silverware, and then Kravitz came back down just in time to see Taako stroll back out onto the lawn trying to make the fucking best of things, cracking jokes to the guests about family and trust and togetherness and all Magnus’ favourite things, generously giving Magnus an _out_ , and turned it into a whole production, obviously. Kravitz is acting like this is a big deal, like Magnus doesn’t cry when he sees a crushed snail on the side of the road or a nicely-shaped cloud, like he isn’t snoring like a cartoon character with one leg hooked over the back of their couch right this goddamn second. And it sure fucking wasn’t Taako’s hosting (‘showboating’, Kravitz had called it, ‘attention-seeking’,) which motivated the guests to start coughing and umming and aahing and getting their purses together then, not in the dazzling brightness of Kravitz’s disapproval, not with those perfect jewelled silver macarons he’d worked so hard to perfect, which were just for Kravitz, _for him,_ which were a surprise, which he never even tried. Kravitz can stare down his nose at Taako all he wants, but if there’s someone with a problem with meanness - with _basic fucking empathy_ \- it isn’t Taako.

“I can’t let you keep going on like this,” says Kravitz, so seriously that, if Taako weren’t plastered, it’d be a little scary. As it were, it just makes him laugh, and that makes Kravitz angrier. “If I did it would be irresponsible, Taako, because I care about you and you’re actively sabotaging yourself and everybody who cares about you at every opportunity. Magnus is still here because he knows you, because he _knows_ you don’t mean what you say when you’re like this, but even he’s not going to hold out forever if you keep needling him every time he tries to get close.”

“Needl- Kravitz, honey, I’m sorry,” says Taako. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about and like, as far as conversations go, this is not up there for me, so I think -”

“Is it Neverwinter?” says Kravitz desperately. “Is it the school? Is - is it me?”

He stares at Kravitz for a second with the same incredulous smile, then deflates and closes his eyes, gripping the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and breathing out long and slow. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he says in a low voice, still grinning to himself, because this is a ridiculous conversation to be having with the Grim Fucking Reaper. “You’re the best, Krav, when you’re not trying to get me to act out your favourite episode of _The Brady Bunch_. I’m happy.”

Kravitz gives him a long, hard look, and Taako refuses to be intimidated.

“You’ll have to face this at some point,” he says, finally. “I’m trying to help you.”

“Well you can give it a rest, okay,” says Taako, “I don’t need it and I’m getting kinda fucking bored of telling you how fine I am all the time.”

He doesn’t see Kravitz’s response to this as he lies down, rolling onto his side, and doesn’t try to picture it. Kravitz sits unmoving for a long time in the dark, then gets slowly to his feet and leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind him. Taako listens for the sound of a rift, but instead hears those familiar, steady footsteps head to the kitchen, the pipes moaning as the faucet turns on.

(Kravitz is so good to him. It makes his stomach hurt.)

Taako doesn’t sleep that night after all, but meditates sitting up on the bedroom floor in his pyjamas. He knows that if he conked out he’d just roll straight into Kravitz and get all mushy, and he doesn’t think he’s forgiven yet - certainly Kravitz isn’t, anyway. So he hears Kravitz come back up the stairs later that night, through the fog of reverie, watches him climb into bed, sees his head turn and Kravitz’s eyes search his face in the dark, and he hears Kravitz murmur something, probably to himself, and he doesn’t make it out, and Kravitz turns away and goes to sleep alone, out of habit or maybe out of spite, in Taako’s bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, it's finally done! I actually cut this chapter quite a bit shorter than planned because a) I felt like I found a good place to stop it partway through and b) it's been like ten fucking years since I updated and I'm really sorry. This was kind of a rough one to write because I started going through some rough personal shit halfway through and I feel like it kind of shows?, but I wanted to give this chapter as much attention and care as I could because I feel like it's an important one and I didn't want to phone it in.
> 
> I'm thinking this fic will probably come in at around 5 chapters, so I've set it as that for now, but it's subject to change.
> 
> I hope you liked it!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako’s not lonely - perish the thought. But those still-foggy, still-half-remembered years of the wide open road, of fresh herbs and mushrooms, of meditating through the night, distantly watching the stars cross the sky alone with his paring knife - they’re a lie, have always been, and so’s the lone wolf adventurer he likes to tell himself they created.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the Shit Hits The Fan chapter. Tread lightly if you're triggered by descriptions of panic, dissociation or vomiting.

And the autumn begins, slowly, to crystallise and chill. Taako keeps busy with branding consultations and partnerships and sponsorships and various creative and philanthropic initiatives. The house in Neverwinter, largely unoccupied, is becoming Ren’s de facto office; whenever Taako drops in, he notices another of her novelty mugs in the cupboard (he’s oddly touched to discover an old Sizzle it Up brand thermos), and as the first snows begin to fall at the city’s outskirts, the space fills with Candlenights decorations, holiday gifts and cards from grateful students and fans, the smell of cinnamon and clove. When he does spend the night at home, when Kravitz is there, the three of them share the space in a silence that’s carefully accommodating, speaking hardly more than necessary, preparing meals and eating together companionably but without particular cheer. Every one of those nights that they’re together, Taako works until he’s too exhausted to see straight and then he goes to their room, where Kravitz sleeps dutifully, conscientiously, on his side of the bed, facing the wall so that Taako can climb in beside him without having to make eye contact, and every one of those nights Taako sits cross-legged on the floor and meditates until Kravitz wakes up and leaves. Since that night Kravitz, always so careful not to push, always so considerate, has not touched him once. But this is hardly an issue because they are home together so rarely in any case. The holidays are a terrible time for infractions against the laws of life and death and so Kravitz is busy with difficult and important work, keeping husbands from their wives and precocious children from their beloved pets as he dismantles death cults and hunts arrogant adventurers. Taako isn’t bothered; he’s determined not to be bothered. He’s too busy to be bothered.

It’s early in December when Taako leaves for Goldcliff. He’s been scheduled to give the keynote address at some entrepreneurial conference, where he’ll wax poetic on the principles of personal branding and maybe break out the thing about living on the edges of the bowl. It’s going to be boring as hell, but the Goldcliff area is wonderfully temperate for this time of year and Taako’s pretty much set to fuck off for a while anyway. He’s making a holiday of it - heading off alone, Krebstar in tow, just like the good old days (if he’d been, back then, the world’s most powerful transmutation wizard and a multiverse-wide celebrity with Death on speed dial in case things got hairy), and it’s going to rule. He even kisses Kravitz goodbye before he leaves, automatically, impersonally, and Kravitz reminds him, with an earnest worry that’s almost irritating, that he’s only ever a call away if anything goes wrong. But Taako hasn’t and doesn’t and won’t need Kravitz and his fussing. He’s going to pick some wild greens by the road and grill some goddamn fish by the riverside and thrill every shitty little village he passes through and he’s going to rock up to Goldcliff windswept and aloof and smelling like wildflowers and he’s going to dazzle them all and he’s going to be fine.

The landscape is beautiful, especially as the farmland skirting the city limits gives way to wild, untended plains and then to idyllic forested hills of poplar and alder and birch, fir and hazel, and the steady rhythm of his palfrey’s plodding footsteps is joined by a chorus of exuberant birds. The roads, usually choked this time of year with families and pedlars and merrymakers, are quiet as Taako bears south. It’s a little early for the tourists, maybe, or a little cold, though Taako finds himself quite comfortable with the wind stinging his cheeks. The countryside’s dotted with the kind of quaint little villages where Taako and Sazed used to sing for their supper and the townspeople are indeed, constantly, overjoyed when Taako deigns to accept their hospitality, and between these settlements he does find silverbeet and amaranth and dandelion, and berries too, and he does fish in the evening when he’s by the water and even trap rabbits when he isn’t, his aunt’s long, bony hands appearing before him even after two hundred long years. With no company but his own thoughts, he begins to find himself keenly but not unpleasantly nostalgic for a time that never was - homesick for a place that doesn’t exist and has never existed, not in this reality. Only, now, in Taako’s head. And he presses further south, and the settlements thin and eventually, maybe two thirds of the way between Neverwinter and Goldcliff, for some time, they vanish altogether and Taako is alone. The romance of it wears off fast: Taako can only muster so much appreciation for Faerun’s vast expanses of frostbitten green, or for the tiny profound fragments of human connection when he passes another traveller on the road or the horribly intermittent but ceaseless fall of muddy sleet or the mounds of horse turds or whatever before he remembers why he gave this shit up in the first place, all those years ago. Taako’s not lonely - perish the thought. But those still-foggy, still-half-remembered years of the wide open road, of fresh herbs and mushrooms, of meditating through the night, distantly watching the stars cross the sky alone with his paring knife - they’re a lie, have always been, and so’s the lone wolf adventurer he likes to tell himself they created. Bored and impatient, he finds himself drifting unbidden into trance even on horseback, losing hours at a time in the cold, unable to control it; he comes back to himself only at the rousing of his sister, shaking his shoulder, ruffling his hair, laughing at him, just out of focus and then half-real and then not there at all. Would he have made it through those years if they’d really happened the way he’d remembered them? Could he have done it alone? Taako blinks, looks around, tries to count what’s real: a little settlement atop a hill in the distance, with a mill, humble little fields of barley, cows grazing; the clouds of his horse’s breath as they plod onward; his hands, slack and trembling a little, on the reins.

Of course he could. Of course he could. “I can handle my shit,” he tells himself, even as the world around him begins to warp and splutter at the edges of his vision and he hovers again above himself and tries to block it out, and as he traverses the winding, forested road he sees the lights of a town in the distance and knows that just beyond the horizon lie the towering red cliffs he’s come for.

It’s early morning when he arrives, at last, in the city, after nearly a week on the road. He’s greeted at City Hall by an enthusiastic representative of the conference, shown to his accommodations at a beautiful inn that would have been entirely beyond his means the last time he’d come here. He wonders after Hurley, but there’s no time to go and seek her out - he’s turned up half a day behind schedule and now barely has time to wash and dress before the event begins. He refreshes his glamour, chooses his gaudiest hat, doesn’t bother with palm cards as he saunters out onto the stage, hears his name booming into the auditorium and casts a little prestidigitation to send a shower of sparks heralding his entrance, waving jauntily, feeling weightless and paper-thin, an ant sizzling under a magnifying glass, in the spotlight. The house is a gaping black maw, unthinking, uncaring, roaring for blood. Taako gives the brightest, most confident smile he can muster and opens his mouth, but can’t hear his own voice, thinks maybe it’s Lup’s issuing from his mouth instead. At the far end of the auditorium, the glowing exit sign is suddenly very far away, and then very bright. He stares at it, and then it’s gone, and then he’s gone.

-

When he comes to, Taako is immediately alert and breathing fast, bolting upright, scrabbling beside the bed for his aunt’s knife. He doesn’t recognise the room he’s in, doesn’t recognise the city outside, and he’s convinced it’s finally happened - he picked the wrong caravan to hitch a ride with, the wrong tavern, the wrong rich boy to cosy up to, and now he’s fucked. He doesn’t recognise his clothes. Even his hands in front of him look wrong: too long, scarred in the wrong places, too clean; he hears himself breathing, tight and hysterical, and the grating, whimpering voice isn’t the one he recognises. He forces himself to relax, to try and slow his breathing, but his head hurts so badly it feels like it’ll split open. And gradually he realises he does know Goldcliff, knows it’s where his friend died only months ago, though he can’t imagine how he got here without Magnus and Merle. Taako almost laughs at his kneejerk panic. He’s hungover, he thinks, nothing some bacon grease won’t fix - but all his shit is gone, and as he pulls the bedcovers to his chest he casts a shrewd eye around the bedroom, wondering how he can contact the Director - wondering how he can get back to the Umbra Staff - and another wave of pain whips through his skull, making him gasp and double over.

Barry’s the one who opens the door to see Taako like this, and he frowns and calls over his shoulder. “Honey? He’s up.”

Taako doesn’t lift his head at the voice, though it’s vaguely familiar, nor at the approaching footsteps. He doesn’t look up as the mattress shifts beneath him or as the blankets are lifted away from him, but when someone begins to wrap cool, thin arms around his neck, Taako jumps and scrambles away instinctually, before he can stop himself. Lup, sitting cross-legged on the bed with arms still outstretched, looks at him like he just socked her in the stomach, and Taako stares back at her, eyes wide, nearly hyperventilating.

“Hey,” she says, quietly, “sweetheart, it’s just me.”

“What the fuck is going on,” Taako says, almost tonelessly, already losing the clarity he’d had half a minute ago, already unable to name this city. “Where -?”

“You checked in here this morning,” she replies, tucking her hair behind her ears, and he realises that her face, her hands, her bare feet tucked under her on the bed are a mirror of his own. “It’s the inn in Goldcliff. The medics said you hadn’t broken anything, so we brought you back here.”

“Jesus,” he breathes, starting to grin at her, “fuckin’ what on god’s green earth did I take, I feel like I - like I could touch you.”

Lup smiles at him for a second, and then scoots closer again, holding out her hand. Taako won’t touch her, though; can’t, though he continues to grin at her, enchanted. Her smile fades.

“Whatever,” she says softly. “You fucking doofus. Go back to sleep, okay? You’ll feel better.”

Taako wants to tell her he’s not tired, that he wants to sober up and find his umbrella, but the girl with his face is lifting one elegant hand, her lips moving, and Taako finds his eyelids heavier, the pain changing quietly, softly, to something harmless and remote and observable from a safe distance. He feels her fingers on his forehead, in his hair, and for just the tiniest sliver of a moment everything feels right, Taako slips into the kind of perfect, transcendent clarity that would make his aunt proud, and then he’s asleep again, and when he wakes again the pain is gone and he remembers everything.

No one is here, this time. Taako can see the faint silhouette of the moon, high over Goldcliff, through the drawn curtains; the room is deathly still. He throws back the blankets, uncomfortable in the too-big bed, churlishly indignant that he’s finally been forced to sleep, and gets to his feet. He still feels awkward in his body, hollow and insubstantial, like a precarious stack of bowling pins animated by magic. But his throat hurts.

The suite they offered him is opulent even to Taako, though, in fairness, if he’d turned up to anything else, probably he would have been offended. The bedroom is enormous, with enough closet space to hold everything his family had ever owned and then some, curtains and bedclothes in golden brocade, an almost obscenely lovely reading nook built into the windowsill. Beyond, the suite encompasses a beautifully furnished parlour that could easily sit the entire Bureau, a fully outfitted marble kitchen, a balcony overlooking the kind of view that, Taako remembers, nearly choked Sazed up the first time he saw it. Lup lies on the couch, knees pulled up to her chest, a pale column of moonlight falling across her sleeping form. Taako can’t look at her without remembering the look on her face when he tore away, and so he turns and goes to the kitchen, quietly pours himself a glass of the water and drinks it in one gulp and is immediately overtaken by nausea. He leans heavily on the kitchen counter, breathing hard, eyes closed. What is wrong with him? He realises he’s trembling and sinks slowly to sit on the ground, forehead pressed against the drawers, trying to keep quiet, to fight down the horrible illness, as he takes in big gulping breaths.

A door closes. Soft footsteps are crossing the suite towards him, and then Kravitz is stooping behind him and putting a hand on his shoulder, saying nothing. Taako wants to throw up, but not on Kravitz, so he shakes his head emphatically and flaps a hand, but Kravitz stays and rubs his back, and all that comes up is water and bile, onto the beautiful marble floor. He still can’t breathe.

“Taako,” says Kravitz, very quietly, like it hurts even to force out the syllables, and Taako makes a noise that could be a laugh or a sob, muffled into his hands, thinking of Lup, asleep on the couch. “Taako, please -”

“I can’t,” whispers Taako, pressing his head into his knees, “I can’t, I can’t do this.”

“It’s okay,” Kravitz tells him, hand still careful and light on his back, so gentlemanly, never pushing. “You don’t have to, Taako, it’s okay.”

It takes several minutes like this, the two of them crouched in the corner of the kitchen, before Taako will take Kravitz’s hand and let him help him to his feet, slowly, quietly, back to the bedroom, head spinning, trying to catch his breath. Kravitz asks Taako carefully if he can touch him and Taako nods, letting Kravitz help him to the bed. Taako’s barely aware of anything, doesn’t think to question Kravitz’s presence, doesn’t think of anything except that he can’t get air, that he can’t feel his hands, that he’s going to puke again. But by and by, the worst of the panic passes, and he’s able to take stock of his situation. He’s on his side, arms crossed over his stomach, and Kravitz is curled up next to him, one arm crooked under his neck and the other around his shoulders, holding him close. He still has his shoes on, which for some reason is deeply upsetting to Taako, not because he gives a shit about the inn’s bed but because Kravitz ought to, and the hand over his back is gripping him a little too tightly. Taako’s breaths lengthen slowly, raggedly; he coughs, knows he’s crying a little but can’t be bothered about it. At length Kravitz unwinds one arm from around him to push his hair out of his eyes, bends to kiss each closed eyelid, and Taako realises with an unpleasant jolt that his eyes are wet too, his breathing also uneven.

“I hate to say I told you so,” says Kravitz, and Taako can’t stop himself from honking with undignified, inappropriate laughter as he shoves him away.

“Fuck you, asshole! God!”

“Taako,” he says, smiling helplessly, sitting up beside him. “Taako, I’ve been so - I -”

“I thought you couldn’t get away,” says Taako, vaguely accusatory, pushing himself up on one elbow. “Isn’t this the busiest -”

“Yes. I’ll - I’ll have to head back, soon, but I… I just.” Kravitz runs a hand through his hair, looks suddenly much too young for six hundred. “Lup told me you - Taako, for god’s sake, what happened?”

Taako sours, flops onto his back, looks away. “Low blood sugar, homie,” he says. “You know how it goes.”

“I don’t understand why you had to come here this way,” says Kravitz. “What were you trying to prove? Taako, if - if this had happened a day earlier, an  _ hour  _ -”

“Fuck, Krav,” Taako says, “I don’t know. I wanted to camp out and shit, like the old days, have some goddamn Taako time. I wanted to be alone for like - for a fucking minute.”

“Did you? You weren’t trying to make this happen? You didn’t want it?”

“Kravitz,” says Taako, feeling his chest constricting again. “Why are you here?”

“Because I wanted to see you,” Kravitz says, reaching out to touch Taako’s arm. He twitches, but doesn’t pull it away. “Because I was scared for you, because I’ve been scared. I didn’t even know if you’d be awake, but I - I wanted to see you.”

Taako closes his eyes, scrunches up his nose, tries to will the tears away. Kravitz’s hand traces a gentle path down his forearm, the inside of his wrist, and then interlaces their fingers, and Taako holds tight.

“This is so fucking humiliating,” he spits, and Kravitz kisses his hand, and he continues, “I don’t know what to do, Krav, I’ve never - it’s never been like this.”

“Lucretia thought the adjustment might be hardest for you,” Kravitz says carefully, “she thought she took too much, that you might struggle -” and Taako waves his free hand impatiently, letting out a little snort at the sound of her name.

“It’s not just that.”

“No, Taako, I know,” says Kravitz softly. “Listen - Taako, you don’t need to feel -”

“How much of the speech did I get through?” asks Taako, and Kravitz pauses. “There are times, you know, when I’m up in front of a class and I’ve been there for like eighty fuckin’ minutes and I can’t remember a single word I said, I don’t know who any of the kids are. I can’t even hear myself talk.” Kravitz is squeezing his hand now, and Taako can feel his pulse pumping through his skin. ”Did I - did I say  _ anything _ ?”

“You introduced yourself,” Kravitz says, softly, “apparently. You said Goldcliff is great, and then you fell off the stage.”

“Fuck,” says Taako, mortified, covering his face with his arm. Kravitz laughs at this, just a little, without much real humour, and Taako finds himself laughing too, and then, without pause, crying again, openly but quietly. He tugs Kravitz down towards him and Kravitz comes easily, lets Taako pin his wrists by his head and meets his gaze unflinchingly. Taako bites his lip, looking down at him. “Maybe I did want it,” he whispers. “This gross fucking tower of bullshit had to topple sometime, right?”

“Maybe it did,” says Kravitz, quite seriously, not moving even when Taako releases one of his hands to rub his eyes furiously.

“I don’t feel much better,” he says. “I feel like shit.”

Taako braces one elbow by Kravitz’s side, eases himself down to lay his head against the slope of Kravitz’s shoulder, his nose pressed against his neck, eyes closed, and after a few seconds he feels Kravitz’s cool arms come up to hold him, feels his lips pressed to his forehead.

“I know, darling,” says Kravitz, “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After that last chapter all the others feel too short lol, I'm sorry! Next one is gonna be the wrap up, probably. Maybe I can squeeze a sixth part out of this thing? Who knows. Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the evenings Taako’s designated custodian retires to the guest room and Taako, who has not seen Kravitz since that night in Goldcliff, wanders the house alone, watches the river in the chill air, does not let himself wonder how demanding Kravitz’s job could really be, how unrelenting the Raven Queen that she won’t give him even one night. He doesn’t picture Kravitz slumped over his desk in feathered cloak and cowl with head in his hands, rehearsing the speech he’ll give Taako, kind and gentlemanly and controlled, when he tells him that he can’t do this anymore. He doesn’t glance at his Stone of Farspeech, silent for all this time, and feel dread gather in his belly, unrelenting and cold as ice. He isn’t afraid. He doesn’t let himself be.

Kravitz left before the sun came up. There was a rift in front of that beautiful windowsill nook - the effect was quite striking, as though the opulent room were overlooking a vista of swirling interplanar stars rather than a sleeping city - and Taako stood before it and carefully straightened Kravitz’s tie, smoothed out his jacket, started helplessly and maddeningly to cry again. His headache was coming back. The room seemed to be tilting downwards, away from him; everything felt wrong. Kravitz stepped forward and reached up and took Taako’s face in one hand, brushed a tear from his cheekbone with the stroke of his thumb, so gently that Taako sobbed, and felt Kravitz’s fingers twitch. “I’ll be back soon,” he said quietly. Taako couldn’t look him in the face, but he nodded.

“I love you,” Taako whispered. Kravitz leaned in to kiss him, soft and slow, and then he let go and stepped back through the portal and vanished. Taako sat down on the edge of the bed and stared down at his hands in his lap, trying to breathe normally. He felt empty, scrubbed raw, bloodless and acidic inside like an infected sore scraped out. 

It was Lup who took Taako back to Neverwinter the next morning, slicing a rift right there in the inn’s lobby as the concierge gaped, so that Taako wouldn't have to face the milling crowds waiting outside to ambush him, and it was Lup who stayed with him those first few days, Lup who insistently, obstinately cooked three square meals and watched him choke them down, Lup who rubbed his back when usually he threw them up again into the kitchen sink, Lup who lay behind Taako on the couch and idly plaited finely detailed patterns into the short hair at the back of his head while the two of them chattered, vaguely, aimlessly, about work and cooking and the Bureau and the past. It was Lup who talked Taako back to himself, patient and resolute, when suddenly he didn’t recognise this house, when again his sister became a stranger with his face, when he found the present dissolving around him again, as often he did in those first days after Goldcliff.

It’s happening less frequently, now, but still things are difficult. It seems to have been decided by consensus that Taako isn’t to be left alone anymore - Taako’s angry about this, and unspeakably embarrassed, but doesn’t seem to have the energy to protest, knowing that with Lup it wouldn’t matter - and so, after Lup returns to work, he grows used to waking up mid-afternoon on the couch to Magnus singing to himself in the garden outside the bay window, to the smell of Ren’s coffee and the scratching of her pen at his kitchen counter, even, once, to Angus’ little voice murmuring snatches of equations from Kravitz’s armchair behind Taako’s head. Taako’s prickly and nervous, ready to seize upon the first patronising or pitying or backhanded comment and turn it back on its unfortunate speaker, but this jab never comes: everybody treats him as normally as if they were back on the Moonbase between jobs, like Taako really has nothing better to do than skulk around his house, falling in and out of fitful sleep, sometimes forgetting his friends’ names; like they themselves have nothing better to do than babysit him. In the evenings Taako’s designated custodian retires to the guest room and Taako, who has not seen Kravitz since that night in Goldcliff, wanders the house alone, watches the river in the chill air, does not let himself wonder how demanding Kravitz’s job could really be, how unrelenting the Raven Queen that she won’t give him even one night. He doesn’t picture Kravitz slumped over his desk in feathered cloak and cowl with head in his hands, rehearsing the speech he’ll give Taako, kind and gentlemanly and controlled, when he tells him that he can’t do this anymore. He doesn’t glance at his Stone of Farspeech, silent for all this time, and feel dread gather in his belly, unrelenting and cold as ice. He isn’t afraid. He doesn’t let himself be. In the early hours of the morning, while Neverwinter wraps itself in absolute dark and quiet, Taako closes the back door quietly behind him and pads barefoot out into the frostbitten garden. He concentrates hard on the grass, cold and damp between his toes, on monitoring the puffs of vapour he exhales at deliberate grounding intervals. He feels fuzzily, implacably removed from himself, as though his consciousness were sitting just half an inch to the left of his body, moving and speaking just half a second earlier. Nervous awareness of his lucidity slipping to and fro underneath him draws the world into sharper focus, and as he stares out at the river and notices in detail the shapes and textures of Neverwinter’s lights in its reflection Taako has an uncanny sensation of living someone else’s life, of occupying, somehow, a space for which he was never meant, one he doesn’t know how to navigate. The sky is very clear and very black, the air stinging his throat as he breathes it in. He reminds himself:  _ I'm Taako the wizard, brother to Lup, five eleven, two hundred and forty-eight years old, if you count the century I lost to an alien jellyfish and to a war against nihilism itself, celebrity chef, teacher, entrepreneur, interplanar scientist and universe-saver, and this is where I'm meant to be. _ It's been two weeks. 

Quietly, the kitchen door closes across the garden. He pulls his shawl tighter around his shoulders, focuses again on his breaths and turns to see the small, dark figure of Angus, crossing the lawn swaddled in a duvet and a pair of delightfully hideous fleece-lined boots which look suspiciously too large and too like Taako’s for his little feet. “I don’t remember you asking to borrow those shoes,” he says reproachfully.

“Hello, sir.” Angus’ voice is soft and thick with sleep as he climbs into a garden chair a few feet away, pulls his knees to his chin, regards Taako in silence for a moment. He holds the blanket around his shoulders with one hand and a brightly coloured, dog-eared paperback in the other, held open between index and middle finger. “It sure is cold out.”

“Coulda sworn it was Magnus’ day today,” mutters Taako, turning back towards the river. 

“It is,” Angus says, “don’t worry. I just came by for dinner, but he said I could stay the night. I hope you don’t mind.”

“What’d you guys eat?”

“Pizza,” mumbles Angus. “Magnus over-ordered, so there’s a whole lot of leftovers if you want them… just between you and me, sir, I think that might’ve been on purpose.”

Taako snorts, turns to stroll back towards Angus, arranging himself - with more delicacy than perhaps is warranted by his bare feet, his ugly old shawl, the hollows of his cheeks, more pronounced now than in years - in another lawn chair. “You should be asleep, boychik, what’s the deal? Mags’ snoring get too much?”

Angus shakes his head with a little yawn, exposing the charming little gap left by a baby canine knocked out on the Rockport Limited. “Oh no, sir, I’m not sleepy at all. I’ve been so caught up in  _ Murder at the Bigtop: A Corrin Cleveland Mystery  _ that I don't think I could get to sleep if I tried!”

“Oh, word,” says Taako vaguely, watching him side-on. 

“It's very thrilling, sir. I was as cynical as anybody about the  _ Caleb Cleveland _ franchise’s unexpected revival, especially considering the series’ decline in quality during the final years of its run, and at first I found the premise of Caleb’s marriage to the lab assistant’s daughter Rakel frankly ridiculous, I'll admit, but if this first instalment is any indication, his son Corrin could be the return to form I've been waiting for.” Angus takes a deep breath, pushes his glasses up his nose. “Of course, this new series  _ is  _ targeting a slightly older readership, so the mysteries are a little grizzlier, but I’m finding this darker tone surprisingly effective.”

“Uh-huh.” Taako’s attention wanders. Angus’ little voice is stumbling and a little flat with sleep even as he briefs Taako on the finer points of his special interest, and weirdly, rather than grating on Taako’s nerves as it once would’ve, it’s a little soothing. Out on the river, enchanted buoys glow in green and white; there’s a cry from some kind of waterfowl Taako can’t identify, but Kravitz probably could. “You wanna tell me about it?”

“Oh, well, I wouldn't want to bore you, sir,” says Angus, shyly.

“Not to be too ungracious, darling, that ship’s already sailed.”

Angus laughs a little, more of a sleepy exhalation than anything, and the knot in the pit of Taako’s stomach loosens just a little.

“Well,” says Angus, stretching out in his blanket, “see, Corrin’s actually visiting the circus because of the disappearance of a colleague, Carly. She always wanted to be a performer, and he'd recently discovered the long-running correspondence she maintained with a charming and beautiful acrobat. But while he was there to investigate one mystery, there occurred another -”

“Tax fraud?”

“Murder!” says Angus, eyes sparkling. “None other than the ringmaster himself!”

“Didn't see that one coming,” yawns Taako.

“I’ll grant you it’s a little trite,” says Angus. “Corrin can hardly believe such a crime was committed right under his nose, but he’s sure it’s connected with Carly, and then something strange happens: the beautiful acrobat begins to receive cryptic, anonymous notes, written in code, and -”

“It’s the coworker,” says Taako. “Murdered the bossman cuz he’s the acrobat’s dad, yeah? Wouldn’t let her be with her lady love?”

“You jumped several steps ahead,” huffs Angus, deflating, “but yeah, that’s the upshot. The most obvious theory, anyways. Which is why I doubt it!”

“Oh,” says Taako, unimpressed, “sure.”

“But you know, she’s a compelling figure, the acrobat! Her situation was difficult before, but now it’s even worse. She’s worried Carly’s the murderer, and so Corrin finds her a real thorn in his side. She’s angry to think her sweetheart could have done such a thing, but what can she do except protect her?”

“Regular du Maurier here, absolutely,” murmurs Taako, and exhales slowly, letting his eyes fall shut as his shoulders slump and his brow softens; the buoys still twinkle inside his eyelids. “Literary as hell.”

“Her belligerence isn’t helping anyone,” Angus ploughs on, “least of all herself. But at the same time it’s admirable, her steadfastness. Her strength of character.”

"Mmm.”

“She didn’t ask for this situation, but she’s determined to get through it on her own terms, come what may. You know, sir?”

Taako opens his eyes and glances sideways at Angus, who’s looking straight ahead, out at the river, a faraway look in his eyes. They sit like that for just a moment, and then Taako snorts and gets back up. “I got some paperwork to catch up on,” he announces, “the kid’s gonna take a leak and head in. Far be it from little old me to tell Mr Big Tough Detective what to do, but as far as I know your powers of deduction haven’t  _ quite  _ solved the riddle of human sleep requirements just yet, so if I were in your lofty position I’d think about gettin’ my ass in bed.”

“Noted,” says Angus, and holds out a hand. Taako rolls his eyes as he grabs it to pull him up, and groans when Angus pulls him into a hug, his cheek pressed to Taako’s sternum. “Night, sir,” he says, “enjoy your leak,” and then he putters back on up the hill towards the house, his steps too wide and too heavy in those silly big boots. Taako watches him close the door behind him. He rubs the back of his neck, looks back out at the river, breathes in deep. He thinks:  _ this is real, Angus is real. He wears beads in his hair and he nails the texture on his macarons and I taught him his first ever spell and he’s twelve years old and he’s here.  _ He reminds himself:  _ I'm Taako the wizard, brother to Lup, two hundred and forty-eight years old, and this is where I'm meant to be _ . He thinks,  _ I’m here _ , and time passes.

-

And then, while Taako sits on the edge of the bathtub and dries his hair on the night of the twenty-third of December, he hears the telltale sound of a rift opening in the living room downstairs. His hands fall into his lap; he sits, towel over his head like a veil, and listens as Kravitz’s footsteps ascend the stairs, very slowly. The bedroom door opens, and then, after a pause, closes again. Taako stands and frowns, through the crack in the door, at Kravitz’s back, at his posture, tense and exhausted, in front of their bedroom. His clothes are caked with dust and the smell of blood, harsh and metallic and certainly not his own, follows him through the hallway. For a few moments, Taako can only stare.

“Look who it is,” he says, then, with none of the sourness he’d intended, but none of the humour, either. “Home for the holidays after all.”

“Taako,” says Kravitz, and turns to him, crosses the hallway to him in one deft movement, his hands already reaching forward, and his face is ablaze with a wanting and desperation and relief so naked and so real that Taako can’t help but step back, his heart jumping into his throat. Kravitz stops, then, outside the bathroom door, looking through the crack at Taako on the other side, and Taako sees him remember himself, close the shutters over that unguarded fierceness in his eyes, and he feels a little guilty for it. “Taako,” Kravitz says, again, “I’m sorry.”

“Work’s work, kemosabe,” says Taako, and pulls the towel off his head, stupidly, as an afterthought. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

A beat passes; they regard each other carefully, uncertainly, one inside and one outside; and then Taako shuts off the bathroom light and Kravitz steps back to let him pass as he goes to the bedroom. Kravitz is still fully dressed in cloak and mantle, gloves and tie, his shoes clicking on the hardwood floor. Taako feels oddly vulnerable in his bare feet and sweatshirt, still holding the damp bath towel, watching Kravitz as he closes the door behind them and leans back against it, letting his eyes flutter shut, inhaling deeply. His shoulders slump, his head tilts back. Maybe it’s Taako’s imagination, but his skin seems a little greyer tonight, his cheeks more gaunt.

“It’s so good to be back here,” says Kravitz, and then, apropos of nothing, “I think I’d started forgetting how to breathe.”

Taako swallows. “Come sit,” he says, and after a moment Kravitz does, gingerly, not too close, and the care he takes not to overstep makes Taako’s heart clench. 

“With you,” Kravitz says, “it just happens without my noticing.”

“You’re done with work?” says Taako.

“It’s gonna be my first Candlenights off in a while, I can tell you,” says Kravitz, smiling wryly. “If there were any death cults looking to set up a function, it’d be a good week for it.”

Taako huffs a little laugh, staring into his lap. “Bet you're feelin’ pretty wrecked, huh?”

“I'm fine.” Kravitz closes his eyes briefly, opens them again. “I'm home.”

Taako doesn’t reply, but, after a tense moment, lifts one hand from where it clutches the towel in his lap and slides it down to the bed beside Kravitz’s. Another beat passes before he’s able, feeling foolish, to hook his pinky finger, the pad still a little wrinkled from the shower, over Kravitz’s own. Neither of them looks at each other. Then, unexpectedly, Kravitz’s breath is hitching and he’s bring a hand up to cover his eyes, and Taako looks up to see him furiously scrubbing at the tears before they can escape. “Whoa,” says Taako, and scoots a little closer. “Krav, hey -”

“I was worried,” says Kravitz thinly, hoarsely, trying very hard to keep his voice even; Taako aches for the lines where the effort of restraining himself pulls back his mouth, for the way his adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “Taako, maybe you don’t remember but that night, you were - I’d never seen you like -”

“I partied too hard, whatever,” says Taako impatiently, reaching up to push a few stray curls from Kravitz’s forehead, “who gives a shit. My dude, why didn’t you come sooner? Why did you not call?”

“I couldn’t,” says Kravitz, “I needed - I needed to work, I needed to concentrate and -”

“That’s horseshit,” says Taako, low and raw.

“- and I needed to think.”

Taako stiffens, and then Kravitz (too gently, too considerately) pulls his hand away and sits up straighter on the bed, closing his eyes, and Taako feels himself turning cold although he’s prepared himself, over the past two weeks, for a hundred different versions of this conversation.

“About what?” he manages, twisting the towel in his hands.

“You,” says Kravitz frankly, and sighs. “Us. What we’re doing here.”

“Uh-huh,” says Taako. “And how’re we stacking up against your projected outcomes? Meeting those KPIs?”

Kravitz is silent, steeling himself, and watching his lovely profile in the soft, low light of their bedroom, Taako finds himself, suddenly, a little dizzy with fear. “Well,” says Kravitz finally, quietly, “it's something that we need to talk about, something we've needed to talk about for a long time. I've known this wasn't working for - for months, and honestly, Taako, I think you have, too, and frankly I haven't wanted to face it any more than you have -”

“No, actually,” Taako says, trying hard to keep his voice light. It's not as though he hasn't been expecting it - as though, he thinks sourly, this could have ended any other way. But like hell he’s going to let Kravitz be the one to do it, much less here in Taako’s bed, not after the way he's seen Taako break apart, the way Taako's ached for him and cried for him and trusted him. He's already had enough humiliation, these past weeks, to last a lifetime. “It's a relief to hear you say that, sweetheart, because, uh, I've been wanting to straighten some shit out too -”

“I need you to let me talk,” says Kravitz softly. Taako opens his mouth to shoot back at him, but Kravitz takes his hand again, finds it trembling, lifts it into his lap and holds it firmly in both of his own. “I'm not leaving. That's not what I want, and I don't think it's what you want either.”

Taako falters; stares at Kravitz’s hands holding his own. He wonders if Kravitz can feel his pulse racing through his fingertips.

“You know,” says Kravitz, “that you - that there’s never been anyone like you, before, for me. Yeah? You know that.” He glances sideways at Taako, who can only shrug and grimace, the closest to an acknowledgement Kravitz will get. “I’ve never said it, but I think you know. I never...Taako, I’ve been dead a  _ long  _ time - I’ve been doing my job for longer than most things ever live - and I’ve met a lot of people, and I’ve seen a lot of things, and I  _ thought  _ that by this point, nothing would put me in a situation I didn’t know how to handle - nothing would catch me off guard - ever again. But you did, and you do, and I haven’t known how to deal with that. I don’t know if you understand how - how exceptional you are, how exceptional this is.”

“Nah, man,” Taako croaks, “the Grim Reaper hookin’ up with an extraplanar chef wizard seems pretty normal to me.”

“My point,” Kravitz says, frowning intently at the wall opposite, “is that I wasn’t ready for this. I’ve been playacting, you know, all this time. Like being alive is about - about going to the farmers’ market or doing laundry or - or sleeping in on Sunday mornings, or whatever. Like if I faked it convincingly enough, or if I -” he swallows - “if I loved you enough, one day I’d wake up and remember, you know - how to be a whole person. How to live.”

“Oh,” says Taako, softly, without meaning to.

“But it’s not enough,” continues Kravitz. “It’s not working. I  _ don’t  _ know how to handle this situation, but it’s not by playing house and hoping things will get better on their own. I want to be with you, Taako, and that means I can’t - I can’t skip over the hard parts anymore. For your sake, but for mine, too.”

“Okay,” says Taako, after a moment. “What does that mean? What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I need you to be honest with me from now on,” says Kravitz, and looks at him, finally, straight on. “To - to try and trust me with that, at least. And I need to be honest with you.” He squeezes Taako’s hand and shifts to face him on the bed, one leg folded, foot hanging off the mattress. Taako tries to look him in the face, but quickly finds himself overwhelmed by the earnestness of his expression, by how hard he’s trying and how carefully he chooses his words, and has to glance away, swallowing hard. “How does that sound? Can I do that?”

Taako shrugs again, ears flattened against his head. “Free country, sweetheart,” he mutters, and immediately hates himself for it when he sees Kravitz sigh, almost imperceptibly, and the grip on his hand loosens a little.

“You asked me - a while back - if I can tell when people are going to die,” says Kravitz, quietly. “I said that I couldn’t unless they needed me to, but the reality is that the lifespan of a mortal depends on so many things - so many factors that could change at the tiniest push - that if you start to look, if it starts to matter to you, you can start to see death everywhere. Fate exists, Taako, but it’s something individuals shape themselves. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Sure,” mumbles Taako.

“And so - no, I can’t know with any certainty, most of the time, when someone’s time is coming. But I can - I can  _ feel  _ death. Sometimes. If I look for it. And in that inn in Goldcliff, Taako - for  _ months _ before that -”

“Okay, stop,” Taako’s saying, too loudly, too abruptly. “That’s enough.”

“- and ignoring it doesn’t make it go away - and you worked so hard for this life and to watch you try so hard to throw it away over - over what? Eight  _ years _ , out of two hundred? Taako, if you’d lost it even a couple of hours earlier that day in Goldcliff -”

“ _ Christ _ , Kravitz,” Taako says, and wrenches his hand away, “I get it. I  _ get it _ .”

“You haven’t been eating,” says Kravitz. “You don’t sleep. You won’t let me touch you - you disappear like that, and I know - I  _ know  _ somewhere in the back of your mind you’re hoping -”

“ _ Fucking stop it _ .” Taako’s voice is high and shrill. He shuffles backwards on the bed, away from Kravitz but facing him directly, now. “You don’t think I’ve heard enough of this shit? You think I don’t  _ know  _ what everyone thinks of me now? What do you want me to do? I admit it, okay, something’s wrong with me. I’m crazy! Junior did something to me and I can’t get past it and I’m not the same anymore. How fuckin’ sad, right! How pathetic! Okay? Good thing I’ve got every fuckin’ spacefaring hero in Faerun here to spoonfeed my sick ass and tuck me into bed at night and - and psychotherapise me through my fucking  _ psychotic breaks _ ! Is that what you wanted? Is that  _ honest  _ enough? Will you shut the  _ fuck  _ up about it now?”

Kravitz doesn’t reply. Taako is breathing fast, gripping his forearms tightly, shoulders hunched. He stares at Kravitz, wide-eyed and feeling sick to his stomach with anger and bitterness and pain, for a long, silent stretch; then, when the concern and the affection and the protectiveness in Kravitz’s expression gets to be too much, he drops his gaze, and shame curls in his stomach like a flower wilting in the autumn chill.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” says Kravitz softly. “You know that.”

“Give me a fucking break,” Taako croaks, but he doesn’t flinch or move away when Kravitz’s hand settles on his shoulder. They sit like that for some time; then, exhausted, Taako leans towards Kravitz, just a little bit, just enough that Kravitz knows to wrap an arm around his back, to move closer, so Taako can lay his head in the curve of Kravitz’s neck and his shoulder, can close his eyes and breathe him in.

“At that party,” Kravitz says, “you were going to tell me something, but Magnus came in.”

“What?”

“I was relieved,” says Kravitz. “You said ‘I want’, and then you stopped.”

Taako doesn’t reply. It feels so good to be held by Kravitz again, he thinks; he could fall asleep right here. He smells like rain, a little bit, and, incongruously, like jasmine. Not like death should.

“Before that, too,” says Kravitz, quietly. “After the wedding. You wanted to say something, but you didn’t - I remember.”

“I was sloshed outta my brain that night,” murmurs Taako. “I was probably going to ask if you thought we should order churros.”

Kravitz laughs, a little haltingly, like something’s stuck in his throat.

“I’m - I’m sorry, Krav,” Taako says, very quietly. “This isn’t what - this isn’t what you signed up for.”

“Taako.”

“You said you wanted to remember how to be alive, or whatever,” he says. “On, like, your own terms, right? Not just play house with some bimbo from TV, right? I’m - I mean, I’m pretty fuckin’ choice in a lot of ways, but I might not be the… I mean, you don’t have to… to stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Taako,” says Kravitz softly, his thumb tracing patterns in the fabric of Taako’s shirt, along his shoulder. “What were you going to say, that night? What did you want?”

“It was stupid,” says Taako.

“No, Taako, come on.”

“I was going to say that I wanted us to be happy,” says Taako. “Conceptually or - or whatever. You and me. Like, boring old people happy. Like we should get a cat. Like I - like I - I was sick of being angry and whatever and I was ready for it. To be, like… fuckin’... to be happy with you.”

“Oh,” Kravitz says, after a moment. “Oh, Taako.”

Taako winds an arm around his waist and tilts his head slightly, just enough to kiss his throat, soft and chaste. “I can try,” he mumbles, against Kravitz’s skin, warming slowly. “It’s not exactly - uh - it’s not my specialty, but I can try to be real with you. Realer.”

“Thanks,” says Kravitz, gently, and close enough to feel the thrumming of his pulse in his neck, folded into his arms and against him so naturally, so comfortably, like it’s where he belongs, Taako can hear him smiling.

-

Candlenights at the Bureau is, by now, a fairly grand affair. Lucretia’s receiving guests in the beautiful suite on the Moonbase’s lowest floor which once housed Taako, Magnus and Merle, and whose bedrooms and kitchenettes have been swapped out for an enviably stocked bar and tasteful lounge furnishings; beneath them, through the clear glass floor, Neverwinter sparkles in red and gold. The atmosphere is jovial, light and affectionate, and many of the partygoers, new employees in the service of Benevolence, are complete strangers to Kravitz. Throughout the evening Taako mingles and schmoozes and dazzles the guests - many of whom are devoted fans, of the Tres Horny Boys or of Taako’s brand itself - just like always, but he sticks close by Kravitz, too, tugging distractedly at his sleeve to pull him along into a new circle, calling him over for a second opinion when a waiter offers a new tray of hors d’oeuvres, making sure the seat beside him is always open. He laughs along at Lup’s anecdotes, whether from their century at sea or her year playing Death, and he makes all the right additions, sardonic or filthy or morbid or all three, to Magnus’ goofs, but Kravitz notices, sometimes, a telltale glassiness to his eyes, a reaction time just a microsecond too long. In these moments he finds Taako’s hand under the table and laces their fingers together, and Taako leans into him, just a little bit, just enough, Kravitz thinks, for the pressure to ground him, and lets himself be silent for a while.

Lucretia plays host with quiet, sophisticated aplomb, and Kravitz is struck, not for the first time, with the contrast between this assuredly dignified woman and the shy child Fisher had shared with the world on the Day of Story and Song. Anyone would believe she’d emerged from the womb giving orders, making plans, worrying over key performance indicators and regarding with vague disapproval the table configurations at company Candlenights parties. But she seems happy. Kravitz knows because he insisted on being kept informed - though Lup had been tense, sometimes openly recalcitrant, when imparting this information - that Madame Director, alone among Taako’s erstwhile colleagues, was conspicuously absent during those two weeks. He knows, also, that this was not for lack of effort; Taako had flatly refused her offers, whether of housework help or homemade pie, offered however gently or however clinically, and neither Barry nor Lup had thought it wise to push. He catches her watching Taako more than once, through the night, a strange and unreadable expression on her face. It isn’t until the dishes are cleared away and the dancefloor begins to fill, though, that she finally makes her way across the room to the two of them. Taako’s staring vaguely down into a glass of scotch, either miles away or listening very intently to Magnus’ breakdown of common myths regarding canine psychology, and doesn’t seem to notice as Lucretia approaches to take the seat on Kravitz’s other side. At his back, partygoers giggle and sway to a syrupy ballad unfamiliar to Kravitz; Lup’s voice rings out over the chatter, laughing over some private joke or memory as she waltzes Barry, a little out of time, from one side of the floor to the other.

“The origin of the alpha-beta myth is super interesting, actually,” Magnus is saying, a little too loudly, already a bit drunk. “It all goes back to, like, you know, inhumane methods in animal behaviour research, and super unscientific interpretations of this behaviour that was really not natural at all, behaviour that stemmed from stress and trauma. But then we just accepted for years that the only way to - like - to cultivate positive relationships with these animals was to abuse them, right? It sucks!”

“It’s quite an anthropocentric approach to the analysis of data, too.” Lucretia’s voice is mild as she settles beside Kravitz, arranging herself with chin balanced on her fingers and ankles crossed with enough poise that he nearly misses the undertone of anxiety, the way her gaze flits to Taako, who doesn’t respond, and back again. “We take it as fact that a species totally separate from ours, with a social structure completely unhindered by all our vanities and insecurities, should be engaged in constant struggle to subordinate and disenfranchise, because it’s what we’re familiar with - and then we use these erroneous conclusions to justify our mistreatment of each other. We tell each other it’s the natural order, when, in fact, that’s a narrative created by man.”

“Right!” Magnus pounds the table, frowning, to punctuate this. “And y’know? Dogs are so great! They deserve better.”

“You could argue that people do, too,” Kravitz says. “Good evening, Lucretia.”

“Hello, Kravitz, Magnus.” She pauses minutely, clears her throat. “Taako.”

Taako nods, throws back the rest of his glass in a slightly overenthusiastic gulp. “Madam Director,” he drawls.

“You boys are looking well,” she continues smoothly. “It’s good to have you here again, you know.”

“Well, I gotta admit the place looks pretty sick,” says Magnus. “Can’t believe these are our old digs. Did we used to have that big hole in the floor?”

“You did,” says Lucretia, smiling. “You rolled a rug over it your first night, if I remember correctly.”

“It was a pretty chill place to come back to,” says Magnus wistfully. “F’only we could’ve taken Pringles, would’ve been perfect.”

“Yeah, I miss falling asleep to the sound of you jerking it every night of my life,” says Taako. “Fuckin’ - just going to  _ town  _ on that wiener right next to my goddamn wall. Life’s just not the same without your disgusting girly drawings cloggin’ my wastepaper basket, I’ll tell you what. Five fuckin’ star accomodations.”

“Okay, four in the morning baking footie pyjama night terrors McGee,” snaps Magnus, which makes Taako snicker. “We’re all super psyched for you living the domestic dream now, shut the fuck up and go design a fuckin’ teapot or whatever.”

“I’m not surprised you couldn’t find anyone to fill our boots,” says Taako, pointedly ignoring Magnus. “Putting anyone else up down here would’ve been a disservice to our memory.”

Lucretia pauses for a moment, pushes a stray curl behind one ear. “Well,” she says gently, “if you ever tire of the life of a celebrity, Taako, the Bureau of Benevolence can always put a talent like yours to use.”

Taako snorts. “Right,” he says, sourly. “Next time you happen upon another universe-threatening embodiment of hatred and despair, sure. But I’m keeping the bar.”

Lucretia smiles, and Taako looks back down into his empty glass, shaking his head strangely as if to empty water from his ears. Magnus cheerfully picks up the slack with Lucretia, but Kravitz isn’t listening; he shifts his chair a little closer to Taako’s and winds an arm across his shoulders, squeezes until he smiles again, tipsily and a little petulantly, like a stubborn child trying to hold out against a fart joke. Kravitz can’t help the pride that swells in his chest at that private, uncontrollable little smile, can’t mask his affection, and the anxiety and the cynicism that have always accompanied those silly mortal feelings are thin and insubstantial. This is important, he thinks, this is real. Not in spite of its smallness, its insignificance, but because of those things. Taako’s baby steps are real, and Kravitz’s desire to participate in them, to hold his hand, is real as well. For centuries Kravitz has avoided acknowledging such things for fear they’d make his work too difficult, would render him ineffective as Eternity’s representative. In fact, the knowledge of life’s little intimacies, he thinks, has only deepened his appreciation of death.

It was true that when Kravitz left Taako in Golfcliff, it was because his services were urgently needed elsewhere; true, also, that to watch Taako tremble and sob that way, clinging to Kravitz like his life depended on it, as frantic and as scared and as desperate as Kravitz had ever seen him, and to hold him and to kiss him and then to leave, was so difficult and so painful Kravitz didn’t know if he could do it again. It was fear that kept Kravitz in the Astral Plane those first couple of nights, plain and simple - fear and distress, and the knowledge, ever more concrete, of Taako’s mortality. When she returned to work, Lup reported, flatly and with a sardonic edge that could sharpen quickly into resentment, that Taako was making every effort to choke down the meals she put in front of him, was sleeping now through the day, didn’t seem to be bolting for any more deathtrap-laden dungeons or provoking any more drunken punch-ups. He was no longer interested in courting death, it seemed, now his motives had been brought into the light; all the fun had gone out of the game, all the suspense. If anything, it was his sedateness now that worried her, maybe more than the mania had. A lack of resistance in Taako - of pride - was somehow deeply wrong. Still, Lup reported dully, her brother forgot himself and hallucinated and was sometimes so disturbed by her presence, so fully lost in this strange, ghostly other Taako’s lonely past, that Lup had to physically restrain him for her own safety. Still, she told Kravitz, he cried often; still, he spoke little, wilting into himself with shame and exhaustion. Lup never told Kravitz to go back. Understood, maybe, that it wouldn’t help, then. “But you should call him,” she said. “Tell him you’re busy. Tell him you’re coming back.”

“He doesn’t want to hear that,” Kravitz deflected. “It wouldn’t do any good.”

“That’s horseshit,” said Lup, and sounded so much like Taako that it made Kravitz wince. “You’re the one who doesn’t want to hear it, Kravitz.” And it was true.

Kravitz went, in those weeks, through mountains of paperwork, conciliatory meetings with this and that minor deity, advocacy for one soul and strident condemnation of another, and his mind, all the while, was back in Neverwinter, churning with feelings Kravitz had forgotten he could have. Whether he loved Taako still, whether he wanted him, was not the issue: he did, desperately, and as he promised him that day in the spectral ruins of Phandalin, nothing would change that. This conviction only rendered his fear more suffocating. Fear for Taako, yes, for the fragility of his imperfect little life, for him to suffer more than he deserved, but fear, also, for himself. The decision to return to Taako in this state, to face his trauma and his anger and his despair, was, had to be, the decision to embrace life and mortality in the way Kravitz had feared as long as he’d known Taako - to be honest. Kravitz hadn’t known if he could do it.

He’d thought, then, of Taako kneeling on that huge disc of sapphire, staring up at him with a smudge of dried blood across his nose and still smelling of cumin and coriander, summoning Death from an ocean of hungry black tar to introduce his long-lost sister; of Taako smiling guardedly at him from across his bedroom as he hung up his cloak, the night after Refuge, and blithely taking responsibility for an entire town of abominations; of Taako that night on the Stillwater Sea, beneath Kravitz with his fingers curled around the back of his neck, looking up into his face with a tenderness and a seriousness and a hope that broke Kravitz’s heart, that knocked the wind out of him. Taako was important - not because of his power or his fame, but because he was real, because he was small and fragile, because even in its grand scope and achievement his life was so limited. Kravitz wanted, he thought, to be a part of that small, deliberate picture, for as long as Taako would have him, more than he’d ever wanted anything. Wanted to be worthy of it. Wanted to build a picture of his own, just as petty and just as finite and just as fraught with little pains and stupidities and wastes of time. Understood, maybe for the first time, how significant those wastes were.

And here, now, Taako’s smiling dourly up at him, cradling his glass of ice in both hands, and Kravitz loves him, loves the hollows in his cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes, loves his bony, scarred hands with their perfectly manicured nails, loves his contradictions and his weaknesses and his fears, and he knows he’s doing the right thing. He knows it when Taako lets his head loll onto his shoulder and closes his eyes and admits, with gentle prodding, that he’s not feeling so well, and when he lets Magnus hug him good night and when he holds Kravitz’s hand as they step together through the rift and home. He knows it when he watches Taako, who doesn’t realise he’s paying attention, go through his breathing exercises silently beside him on the couch, counting silently up to five and then back down again, being so diligent, trying so hard. He knows it when Taako rolls over to kiss him, sleepily, simply, as he’s falling asleep in their bed later that night. It’s the right thing. It’s the only thing. And the days turn to weeks, and then to months, and Kravitz is in love, transcendently, pathetically in love, and horribly, wonderfully alive with it.

-

There isn’t an ending. They wake up every morning and move, minute by minute, through another day. Magnus and Merle visit Taako more and more often. Lup and Barry, Ren, Angus - there’s scarcely time to breathe, sometimes, between all these loved ones, and yet Taako can’t bring himself to resent the intrusion as sincerely as he’d like. It’s time for the rest of his life, now. There was a time Taako really could have taken or left it - life, and the world, and all of it - but that time is growing more and more remote with every passing day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kinda don't love the ending but it's done! Thanks for reading The Only Thing I Have Ever Finished. Hope you liked it!


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